PERIODS OF EUROPEAN HISTORY
REVOLUTIONARY EUROPE
1789–1815
REVOLUTIONARY
EUROPE
1789–1815
BY
H. MORSE STEPHENS, M.A.
BALLIOL COLLEGE, OXFORD
PROFESSOR OF HISTORY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, U.S.A.
AUTHOR OF ‘A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION,’ ETC.
_PERIOD VII_
London
RIVINGTON, PERCIVAL, & CO.
1896
_Third Edition_
_All Rights Reserved_
AUTHOR’S PREFACE
In this volume I have endeavoured to write a history of Europe during
an important period of transition. I have reduced military details to
the smallest possible limits, and have preferred to mention rather
than to describe battles and campaigns, in order to have more space
to devote to such questions as the Belgian revolution of 1789, the
reorganisation of Prussia in 1806–12, and the Congress of Vienna.
I have throughout tried to describe the French Revolution in its
influence on Europe, and Napoleon’s career as a great reformer rather
than as a great conqueror. The inner meaning of the period and its
general results I have sketched in a short introductory chapter, on
which the rest of the volume is really a detailed historical commentary.
The maps which accompany the volume are intended to show the changes
in the boundaries of States, and not to give the position of places
mentioned in the text. Every one who reads such a volume as the
present must use an atlas as his constant companion, for no book of
this size could possibly contain a sufficient number of maps adequate
to the illustration of the events narrated.
In conclusion, I must express my thanks to Mr. W. R. Morfill, Reader
in Slavonic to the University of Oxford, for giving me a canon for
the spelling of Russian proper names, and to the Editor, Mr. Arthur
Hassall, for willing assistance and friendly encouragement.
H. MORSE STEPHENS.
CAMBRIDGE, 1893.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
PAGE
The Period from 1789 to 1815 an Era of Transition—The Principles
propounded during the period which have modified the
political conceptions of the Eighteenth Century: I. The
Principle of the Sovereignty of the People; II. The Principle
of Nationality; III. The Principle of Personal Liberty—The
Eighteenth Century, the Era of the Benevolent Despots—The
condition of the Labouring Classes in the Eighteenth Century:
Serfdom—The Middle Classes—The Upper Classes—Why France
led the way to modern ideas in the French Revolution—The
influence of the thinkers and writers of the Eighteenth
Century in bringing about the change—Contrast between the
French and German thinkers—The low state of morality and
general indifference to religion—Conclusion, 1
CHAPTER I.
1789
The Treaty of 1756 between France and Austria—The Triple
Alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland, 1788—The
Minor Powers of Europe—Austria: Joseph II.—His Internal
Policy—His Foreign Policy—Russia: Catherine—Poland—France:
Louis XVI.—Spain: Charles IV.—Portugal: Maria I.—Italy—The
Two Sicilies: Ferdinand IV.—Naples—Sicily—Rome: Pope Pius
VI.—Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold—Parma: Duke Ferdinand—Modena:
Duke Hercules III.—Lombardy—Sardinia: Victor Amadeus
III.—Lucca—Genoa—Venice—England: George III.—The Policy
of Pitt—Prussia: Frederick William II.—Policy of
Prussia—Holland—Denmark: Christian VII.—Sweden: Gustavus
III.—The Holy Roman Empire—The Diet—The Electors—College
of Princes—College of Free Cities—The Imperial
Tribunal—The Aulic Council—The Circles—The Princes of
Germany—Bavaria—Baden—Würtemburg—Saxony—Saxe-Weimar—The
Ecclesiastical Princes—Mayence—Trèves—Cologne—The
Petty Princes and Knights of the
Empire—Switzerland—Geneva—Conclusion, 11
CHAPTER II
1789–1790
The Empress Catherine and the Emperor Joseph II.—The Turkish
War—Campaign of 1789 against the Turks—Battles of Foksany and
the Rymnik—Capture of Belgrade—Revolution in Sweden—Affairs
in Belgium—Policy of Joseph II. in Belgium—Revolution in
Liége—Elections to the States-General in France—Meeting
of the States-General: struggle between the Orders—The
Tiers État declares itself the National Assembly—Oath of the
Tennis Court—The Séance Royale—Mirabeau’s Address to the
King—Dismissal of Necker—Riot of 12th July in Paris—Capture
of the Bastille—Recall of Necker—Louis XVI. visits
Paris—Murder of Foullon—Session of 4th August—Declaration
of the Rights of Man—Question of the Veto—March of the
women of Paris to Versailles—Louis XVI. goes to reside in
Paris—Effect of the Revolution in France on Europe—The
Revolution in Belgium—Formation of the Belgian Republic—Death
of the Emperor Joseph II.—Failure of his reign—The attitude
of Louis XVI. to the French Revolution—The new French
Constitution—Civil Constitution of the Clergy—Measures of the
Constituent Assembly—Mirabeau—Danger threatened to the new
state of affairs in France by a foreign war—Mirabeau and the
French Court—Probable causes of a foreign war—Avignon and the
Venaissin—Affair of Nootka Sound—The Pacte de Famille—Rights
of Princes of the Empire in Alsace—The Emperor Leopold master
of the situation, 42
CHAPTER III
1790–1792
The Emperor Leopold—His Internal Policy—The Policy of
Prussia—Leopold’s Foreign Policy—Conference of
Reichenbach—Leopold and the Turks—Treaty of Sistova—Leopold
crowned Emperor—Leopold and Hungary—State of Parties
in Belgium—Their Internal Dissensions—Congress at the
Hague—Leopold reconquers Belgium—War between Russia
and Sweden—Treaty of Verela—War between Russia and the
Turks—Capture of Ismail—Treaty of Jassy—Position of
Leopold—The State of France—Mirabeau’s advice—Death of
Mirabeau—The Flight to Varennes—Its Results: in France—The
Massacre of 17th July 1791—Revision of the Constitution—Its
Results: in Europe—Manifesto of Padua—Declaration of
Pilnitz—Completion of the French Constitution of 1791—The
Polish Constitution of 1791—The Legislative Assembly
in France—The Girondins—Approach of War between France
and Austria—Causes of the War—Attitude of Europe—Death
of the Emperor Leopold—Murder of Gustavus III. of
Sweden—Policy of Dumouriez—War declared by France against
Austria—Invasion of the Tuileries, 20th June 1792—Francis
II. crowned Emperor—Invasion of France by Prussia and
Austria—Insurrection of 10th August 1792—Suspension of Louis
XVI.—Desertion of Lafayette—The Massacres of September
in the prisons—Battle of Valmy—Meeting of the National
Convention—The Girondins and the Mountain—Conquest of
Savoy, Nice, and Mayence—Battle of Jemmappes—Conquest
of Belgium—Execution of Louis XVI.—War declared against
Spain, Holland, England and the Empire—Catherine invades
Poland—Overthrow of the Polish Constitution—Second Partition
of Poland—Contrast between the resistance of France and
Poland, 82
CHAPTER IV
1793–1795
France at War with Europe—Altered Character of the War—The
Revolutionary Propaganda—First Campaign of 1793—Battle of
Neerwinden—Desertion of Dumouriez—Creation of the Committee
of Public Safety—Insurrection in La Vendée—Creation of
the Revolutionary Tribunal—Struggle between the Girondins
and the Mountain—Overthrow of the Girondins—Second
Campaign of 1793—Loss of Valenciennes and Mayence—Civil
War in France—Royalist and Federalist Risings—Loss
of Toulon—Constitution of 1793—The work of the first
Committee of Public Safety—The Great Committee of Public
Safety—Growth of its Power—Position of Robespierre—The Reign
of Terror—The Committee of General Security, the Deputies
on Mission, the Revolutionary Tribunal, the Laws of the
Suspects and the Maximum—Results of the Terror—Battles
of Hondschoten, Wattignies, and the Geisberg—Relief of
Maubeuge—Recovery of Lyons and Toulon—Fall of the Hébertists
and the Dantonists—Campaign of 1794—Battles of Fleurus,
Kaiserslautern, and 1st June 1794—Fall of Robespierre—Rule
of the Thermidorians: First Phase: the Survivors of the
Mountain—Conquest of Holland—The Batavian Republic—Successes
on the Rhine, in Savoy, Italy, and Spain—Insurrection
in Poland—The Campaign of Kosciuszko—Third and Final
Partition of Poland—Contrast between the Polish and
French Revolutions—Its Causes—Change in the Attitude of
the Continental Powers to the French Republic—Rule of the
Thermidorians: Second Phase: the Survivors of the Girondins
and Deputies of the Centre—Insurrections of 12th Germinal
and 1st Prairial in Paris—The Constitution of the Year III.
(1795)—The Treaties of Basle—France again enters the Comity
of Nations, 124
CHAPTER V
1795–1797
Results of the Treaties of Basle on the Foreign Policy of
France—Constitution of the Year III.—The Directory—The
Legislature: Councils of Ancients and of Five Hundred—Local
Administration of France—The Insurrection of Vendémiaire—The
Rising of 13th Vendémiaire in Paris—The First French
Directors, Councils, and Ministers—Dissolution of
the Convention—England and the _Émigrés_—Treason of
Pichegru—Exchange of Madame Royale—Desire for Peace in
France—France and Prussia—Suggestion of Secularisations in
Germany—France and the Smaller States of Europe—Attitude of
Russia—Campaign of 1795 in Germany—Bonaparte’s Campaigns
of 1796 in Italy—Battle of Montenotte—Armistice of
Cherasco—Battle of Lodi—Armistice of Foligno—Conquest of
Upper Italy—Battles of Castiglione, Arcola, and Rivoli—Peace
of Tolentino with the Pope—Campaign of 1796 in Germany—Battle
of Altenkirchen—Retreat of Moreau—Effects of the Campaign
in Germany—Treaty between Prussia and France—Internal
Policy of the Directory—Pacification of La Vendée—The
State of France—The Directory, Councils, and Ministers in
1796—Creation of the Ministry of Police—Alliance between
France and Spain—Treaty of San Ildefonso—Battle of Cape
Saint-Vincent—The Batavian Republic—Negotiations between
England and the Directory—Death of the Empress Catherine of
Russia—Bonaparte’s Campaign of 1797 in the Tyrol—The Campaign
of 1797 in Germany—Preliminaries of Leoben between France and
Austria, 158
CHAPTER VI
1797–1799
Elections of 1797 in France—Policy of the Clichians—Struggle
between the Directors and the Clichians—Negotiations for
Peace between England and the Directory—Changes in the
French Ministry—Revolution of 18th Fructidor—Bonaparte
in Italy—Occupation of Venice—The Ligurian and Cisalpine
Republics formed—Annexation of the Ionian Islands by
France—Treaty of Campo-Formio—Capture of Mayence—The
Batavian Republic—Battle of Camperdown—Bonaparte’s
Expedition to the East—Capture of Malta—Conquest of
Egypt—Battle of the Nile—Internal Policy of the
Directory after 18th Fructidor—Foreign Policy—Attitude
of England, Prussia, Austria, and Russia—The Helvetian
Republic—Italian Affairs—The Roman and Parthenopean Republics
formed—Occupation of Piedmont and Tuscany by France—The
Law of Conscription—Outbreak of War between Austria and
France—Murder of the French Plenipotentiaries at Rastadt—The
Campaign of 1799—In Italy—Battles of Cassano, the Trebbia
and Novi—Italy lost to France—In Switzerland—Battle
of Zurich—In Holland—Battles of Bergen—Results of the
Campaign of 1799—Policy and Character of the Emperor Paul
of Russia—Bonaparte’s Campaign of 1799 in Syria—Siege of
Acre—Battle of Mount Tabor—Struggle between the Directors and
the Legislature in France—Revolution of 22d Prairial—Changes
in the Directory and Ministry—Bonaparte’s return to
France—Revolution of 18th Brumaire—End of the Government of
the Directory in France, 187
CHAPTER VII
1799–1804
Constitution of the Year VIII.—The Consulate—The Council of
State—The Tribunate—The Legislative Body—The Senate—Internal
Policy of the Consulate—General Reconciliation—The
Code Civil—Ministers of the Consulate—Foreign Policy
of the Consulate—Russia—Prussia—The Pope—Campaign of
Marengo—Campaign of Hohenlinden—Winter Campaign of Moreau
and Macdonald—The Treaty of Lunéville—Arrangements in
Italy—Policy and Murder of the Emperor Paul of Russia—The
Neutral League of the North—Battle of Copenhagen—War
between Spain and Portugal—Treaty of Badajoz—Campaign
of 1801 in Egypt—Peace of Amiens between England and
France—Reconstitution of Germany—Secularisation of
the German ecclesiastical dominions—Reconstitution of
Switzerland—Concordat between the Pope and Bonaparte—Internal
Organisation of France under the Consulate—The new
Departments—Annexation of Piedmont—The Préfectures—System of
National Education—Constitutional Changes in France—Bonaparte
First Consul for life—Recommencement of War between
England and France—Causes—Position of Affairs on the
Continent—Plot of Pichegru and Cadoudal—Execution of the Duc
d’Enghien—Bonaparte becomes Emperor of the French—Francis II.
resigns the title of Holy Roman Emperor for that of Emperor
of Austria, 212
CHAPTER VIII
1804–1808
Napoleon, Emperor of the French—His Coronation as Emperor and
as King of Italy—The Imperial Court—The Grand Dignitaries,
Marshals, and Imperial Household—Institutions of the
Empire—Ministers and Government—The Camp at Boulogne—Pitt’s
last coalition—Campaign of 1805—Capitulation of Ulm—Battles
of Austerlitz and Caldiero—Battle of Trafalgar—Treaty of
Pressburg—Death of Pitt—Prussia declares War—Campaign of
Jena—Campaign of Eylau—Campaign of Friedland—Interview
and Peace of Tilsit—The Continental Blockade—Capture
of the Danish Fleet by England—French Invasion and
Conquest of Portugal—State of Sweden—The Rearrangement
of Europe—Louis Bonaparte King of Holland—Italy—Joseph
Bonaparte King of Naples—Battle of Maida—Rearrangement of
Germany—Bavaria—Würtemburg—Baden—Jerome Bonaparte King of
Westphalia—Murat Grand Duke of Berg—Saxony—Smaller States of
Germany—Mediatisation of Petty Princes—Confederation of the
Rhine—Poland—The Grand Duchy of Warsaw—Conference of Erfurt, 237
CHAPTER IX
1808–1812
Napoleon’s two reverses between the Treaty of Tilsit and the
Congress of Erfurt—England sends an army to Portugal—Campaign
of Vimeiro and Convention of Cintra—The Revolution in
Spain—Joseph Bonaparte King of Spain—Victory of Medina del
Rio Seco and Capitulation of Baylen—Napoleon in Spain—Sir
John Moore’s advance—Battle of Corunna—The Resurrection
of Austria—Ministry of Stadion—Campaign of Wagram—Treaty
of Vienna—Campaign of 1809 in the Peninsula—Battle
of Talavera—Expedition to Walcheren—Napoleon and the
Pope—Annexation of Rome—Revolution in Sweden—Revolution in
Turkey—Treaty of Bucharest—Greatest Extension of Napoleon’s
dominions—Internal Organisation of the Empire—The new
Nobility—Internal reforms—Law—Finance—Education—Extension
of these reforms through Europe—Disappearance of
Serfdom—Religious Toleration—Reorganisation of
Prussia—Reforms of Stein and Scharnhorst—Revival of
German National feeling—Marriage of Napoleon to the
Archduchess Marie Louise—Birth of the King of Rome—Steady
opposition of England to Napoleon—Policies of Canning and
Castlereagh—Campaigns of 1810 and 1811 in the Peninsula—Signs
of the decline of Napoleon’s power between 1808 and 1812, 263
CHAPTER X
1810–1812
Causes of Growing Disagreement between Alexander and
Napoleon—Intervention of Castlereagh and Bernadotte—The
Attitude and Internal Policy of Prussia—Invasion of Russia
by Napoleon—Battle of Borodino—Retreat of the French
from Russia—Campaign of 1812 in the Peninsula—Battle of
Salamanca—Policy of Bernadotte—Prussia declares War—First
Campaign of 1813 in Saxony—Armistice of Pleswitz—Convention
of Reichenbach—Congress of Prague—Austria declares War—Second
Campaign of 1813 in Saxony—Battle of Dresden—Treaty of
Töplitz—Battle of Leipzig—General Insurrection of Germany
against Napoleon—Campaign of 1813 in the Peninsula—Battle
of Vittoria—Wellington’s Invasion of France—Negotiations
for Peace—Proposals of Frankfort—The Allies invade
France—Napoleon’s first Defensive Campaign of 1814—Other
Movements against Napoleon—Bernadotte—Holland—Battle of
Orthez—Italy—Congress of Châtillon—Attitude of France towards
Napoleon—Treaty of Chaumont—Napoleon’s Second Defensive
Campaign of 1814—Occupation of Paris by the Allies—The
Policy of Talleyrand—The Provisional Government—Alexander’s
Speech to the French Senate—Napoleon declared to be no
longer Emperor—Abdication of Napoleon—Provisional Treaty of
Paris—Battle of Toulouse—Arrival of Louis XVIII., and his
Assumption of the Throne of France—First Treaty of Paris, 299
CHAPTER XI
1814–1815
The Congress of Vienna—Monarchs and Diplomatists
present—History of the Congress—Treaty between France,
Austria, and England—The Questions of Saxony and
Poland—The German Confederation—Disposition of the
provinces on the left bank of the Rhine—Mayence and
Luxembourg—Reconstitution of Switzerland—Rearrangements
in Italy—Questions of Murat, Genoa, and the Empress Marie
Louise—Sweden—Denmark—Spain—Portugal—England’s share
of the spoil—The Questions of the Slave Trade and the
Navigation of Rivers—Close of the Congress—Preparations
against Napoleon—The first reign of Louis XVIII. in
France—Napoleon’s return from Elba—The Hundred Days—The
Campaign of Waterloo—Occupation of Paris—Second Treaty of
Paris—Napoleon sent to St. Helena—The Holy Alliance—Return
of Louis XVIII.—Government of the Second Restoration—The
Chambre Introuvable—Reaction in Spain and Naples—Territorial
Results of the Congress of Vienna—The Principle of
Nationality—Permanent Results of the French Revolution
in Europe—The Problem of harmonising the Principles of
Individual and Political Liberty with that of Nationality, 336
APPENDICES
APPENDIX I. The Rulers and Ministers of the Great Powers of
Europe, 1789–1815, 364
APPENDIX II. The Rulers of the Second-rate Powers of Europe,
1789–1815, 366
APPENDIX III. The Family of Napoleon, 368
APPENDIX IV. Napoleon’s Marshals, 370
APPENDIX V. Napoleon’s Ministers during the Consulate and
Empire, 1799–1814, 372
APPENDIX VI. Concordance of the Republican and Gregorian
Calendars, 374
INDEX, 377
MAPS
Europe in 1789.}
Europe in 1802.} _At end of book._
Europe in 1810.}
Europe in 1815.}
INTRODUCTION
The Period from 1789 to 1815 an Era of Transition—The Principles
propounded during the period which have modified the
political conceptions of the Eighteenth Century: I. The
Principle of the Sovereignty of the People; II. The Principle
of Nationality; III. The Principle of Personal Liberty—The
Eighteenth Century, the Era of the Benevolent Despots—The
condition of the Labouring Classes in the Eighteenth Century:
Serfdom—The Middle Classes—The Upper Classes—Why France
led the way to modern ideas in the French Revolution—The
influence of the thinkers and writers of the Eighteenth
Century in bringing about the change—Contrast between the
French and German thinkers—The low state of morality and
general indifference to religion—Conclusion.
[Sidenote: A Period of Transition.]
The period from 1789 to 1815—that is, the era of the French Revolution
and of the domination of Napoleon—marks one of the most important
transitions in the history of Europe. Great as is the difference
between the material condition of the Europe of the nineteenth century,
with its railways and its electric telegraphs, and the Europe of the
eighteenth century, with its bad roads and uncertain posts, it is not
greater than the contrast between the political, social, and economical
ideas which prevailed then and which prevail now. Modern principles,
that mark a new departure in human progress and in its evidence,
Civilisation, took their rise during this epoch of transition, and
their development underlies the history of the period, and gives the
key to its meaning.
[Sidenote: The Sovereignty of the People.]
The conception that government exists for the promotion of the
security and prosperity of the governed was fully grasped in the
eighteenth century. But it was held alike by philosophers and rulers,
alike in civilised England and in Russia emerging from barbarism
that, whilst government existed for the good of the people, it
must not be administered by the people. This fundamental principle
is in the nineteenth century entirely denied. It is now believed
that the government should be directed by the people through their
representatives, and that it is better for a nation to make mistakes
in the course of its self-government than to be ruled, be it ever so
wisely, by an irresponsible monarch. This notion of the sovereignty of
the people was energetically propounded during the great Revolution in
France. It is not yet universally accepted in all the states of modern
Europe. But it has profoundly affected the political development of
the nineteenth century. It lies at the base of one group of modern
political ideas; and, though in 1815 it seemed to have been propounded
only to be condemned, one of the most striking features of the modern
history of Europe since the Congress of Vienna, has been its gradual
acceptance and steady growth in civilised countries.
[Sidenote: The Principle of Nationality.]
The second political belief introduced during the epoch of transition
from 1789 to 1815 was the recognition of the idea of nationality in
contradistinction to that of the State, which prevailed in the last
century. In the eighteenth century the State was typified by the
ruling authority. National boundaries and race limits were regarded as
of no importance. It was not felt to be an anomaly that the Catholic
Netherlands or Belgium should be governed by the House of Austria,
or that an Austrian prince should reign in Tuscany and a Spanish
prince in Naples. The first partition of Poland was not condemned as
an offence against nature, but as an artful scheme devised for the
purpose of enlarging the neighbouring states, which had appropriated
the districts lying nearest to their own territories. But during the
wars of the Revolution and of Napoleon the idea of nationality made
itself felt. France, as a nation in arms, proved to be more than a
match for the Europe of the old conceptions. And it was not until her
own sense of nationality was absorbed in Napoleon’s creation of a new
Empire of the West that France was vanquished by coming in contact with
the Spanish, the Russian, and the German peoples in the place of her
former foes, the sovereigns of Europe. The idea of nationality, like
the idea of the sovereignty of the people, seemed to be condemned in
1815 by the Congress of Vienna. The Catholic Netherlands were united
with the provinces of Holland; Norway was forcibly separated from
Denmark; Italy was once more parcelled out into independent states
under foreign princes. But the Congress of Vienna could not eradicate
the new idea. It had taken too deep a root. And another striking
feature of the European history of the nineteenth century has been the
formation of new nations, resting their _raison d’être_ on the feeling
of nationality and the identity of race.
[Sidenote: The Principle of Personal Liberty.]
The third modern notion which has transformed Europe is the recognition
of the principle of personal and individual liberty. Feudalism left the
impress of its graduation of rights and duties marked deeply on the
constitutions of the European States. The sovereignty of the people
implies political liberty of action; feudalism denied the propriety and
advantages of social and economical freedom. Theoretically, freedom
of individual thought and action was acknowledged to be a good thing
by all wise philosophers and rulers. Practically, the poorer classes
were kept in bondage either as agricultural serfs by their lords or as
journeymen workmen by the trade-guilds. Where personal and individual
liberty had been attained, political liberty became an object of
ambition, and political liberty led to the idea of the sovereignty of
the people. The last vestiges of feudalism were swept away during this
era of transition. The doctrines of the French Revolution did more
than the victories of Napoleon to destroy the political system of the
eighteenth century. The Congress of Vienna in 1815 might return to the
former notions of government and the State, but it did not attempt
to restore the old restrictions on individual liberty. With personal
freedom acknowledged, the reactionary tendency of the Congress of
Vienna was left of no effect. Liberty of thought and action led to the
resurrection of the conceptions of nationality and of the sovereignty
of the people, which were but for the moment extinguished by the defeat
of France in the person of Napoleon by the armies of united Europe.
[Sidenote: The Benevolent Despots.]
The period which preceded the French Revolution and the era of
war, from the troubles of which modern Europe was to be born, may
be characterised as that of the benevolent despots. The State was
everything; the nation nothing. The ruler was supreme, but his
supremacy rested on the assumption that he ruled his subjects for their
good. This conception of the _Aufgeklärte Despotismus_ was developed
to its highest degree by Frederick the Great of Prussia. ‘I am but the
first servant of the nation,’ he wrote, a phrase which irresistibly
recalls the definition of the position of Louis XVI. by the first
leaders of the French Revolution. This attitude was defended by great
thinkers like Diderot, and is the keynote to the internal policy of the
monarchs of the latter half of the eighteenth century towards their
people. The Empress Catherine of Russia, Gustavus III. of Sweden,
Charles III. of Spain, the Archduke Leopold of Tuscany, and, above
all, the Emperor Joseph II. defended their absolutism on the ground
that they exercised their power for the good of their subjects. Never
was more earnest zeal displayed in promoting the material well-being
of all classes, never did monarchs labour so hard to justify their
existence, or effect such important civil reforms, as on the eve of the
French Revolution, which was to herald the overthrow of the doctrine
of absolute monarchy. The intrinsic weakness of the position of the
benevolent despots was that they could not ensure the permanence of
their reforms, or vivify the rotten fabric of the administrative
edifices, which had grown up in the feudal monarchies. Great ministers,
such as Tanucci and Aranda, could do much to help their masters to
carry out their benevolent ideas, but they could not form or nominate
their successors, or create a perfect body of unselfish administrators.
When Frederick the Great’s master hand was withdrawn, Prussia speedily
exhibited a condition of administrative decay, and since this was
the case in Prussia, which had been for more than forty years under
the rule of the greatest and wisest of the benevolent despots, the
falling-off was likely to be even more marked in other countries. The
conception of benevolent despots ruling for their people’s good was
eventually superseded, as was certain to be the case, owing to the
impossibility of their ensuring its permanence, by the modern idea of
the people ruling themselves.
[Sidenote: The Condition of the Labouring Classes.]
[Sidenote: Serfdom.]
And, in truth, while doing full justice to the sentiments and the
endeavours of the benevolent despots, it cannot honestly be said that
their efforts had done much to improve the condition of the labouring
classes by the end of the eighteenth century. The great majority of
the peasants of Europe were throughout that century absolute serfs. To
take once more the example of Prussia, the only attempts to improve
the condition of the peasants had been made in the royal domain, and
they had only been very tentative. The dwellers on the estates of the
Prussian nobility in Silesia and Brandenburg were treated no better
than negro slaves in America and the West Indies. They were not allowed
to leave their villages, or to marry without their lords’ consent;
their children had to serve in the lords’ families for several years at
a nominal wage, and they themselves had to labour at least three days,
and often six days, a week on their lords’ estate. These _corvées_ or
forced labours occupied so much of the peasant’s time that he could
only cultivate his own farm by moonlight. This state of absolute
serfdom was general in Central and Eastern Europe, in the greater part
of Germany, in Poland and in Russia, and where it existed the artisan
class was equally depressed, for no man was allowed to learn a trade
without his lord’s permission, and an escaped serf had no chance of
admission into the trade-guilds of the cities. Towards the west a
more advanced civilisation improved the condition of the labourers;
the Italian peasant and the German peasant on the Rhine had obtained
freedom to marry without his lord’s interference; but, nevertheless, it
was a leading prince on the Rhine, the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who
sold his subjects to England to serve as mercenaries in the American
War of Independence. In France the peasant was far better off. The only
serfs left, who existed on the domain of the Abbey of Saint-Claude
in the Jura, on whose behalf Voltaire wielded his powerful pen, were
in a far happier condition than the German serfs; they could marry
whom they pleased; they might emigrate without leave; their persons
were free; all they were deprived of was the power of selling their
property or devising it by will. The rest of the French peasants
and the agricultural classes generally were extremely independent.
Feudalism had left them some annoyances but few real grievances, and
the inconveniences they suffered were due solely to the inequalities
of the copyhold system of tenure and its infringements of their
personal liberty. The French peasants and farmers were indignant at an
occasional day’s _corvée_, or forced labour, which really represented
the modern rent, and at the succession-duties they had to pay the
descendants or representatives of their ancestors’ feudal lords. The
German, Polish, and Hungarian peasant, on the contrary, crushed beneath
the burden of his personal servitude, did not dream of pretending to
own the plot of land, which his lord kindly allowed him to cultivate in
his few spare moments.
[Sidenote: The Middle Classes.]
The mass of the population of Central and Eastern Europe was purely
agricultural, and in its poverty expected naught but the bare
necessaries of existence. Trade, commerce, and manufactures were
therefore practically non-existent. This meant that the cities,
and consequently the middle classes, formed but an insignificant
factor in the population. In the West of Europe, on the Rhine, and
more especially in France, where the agricultural classes were more
independent, more wealthy, and more civilised, existence demanded more
comforts, and a well-to-do and intelligent commercial and manufacturing
urban element quickly developed to supply the demand created. Commerce,
trade, and the concentrated employment of labour produced a prosperous
and enlightened middle class, accustomed for generations to education
and the possession of personal freedom. With wealth always goes
civilisation and education, and as there was a larger middle class in
France and Western Germany than in Central and Eastern Europe, the
peasants in those parts were better educated and more intelligent.
[Sidenote: The Upper Classes.]
The condition of the upper classes followed the same geographical
distribution. The highest aristocracy of all European countries was
indeed, as it has always been, on much the same intellectual and social
level. Paris was its centre, the capital of society, fashion, and
luxury, where Russian, Austrian, Swedish, and English nobles met on an
equality. But the bulk of the German and Eastern European aristocracy
was in education and refinement inferior to the bulk of the French
nobility. Yet they possessed an authority which the French nobility had
lost. The Russian, Prussian, and Austrian nobleman and the Hungarian
magnate was the owner of thousands of serfs, who cultivated his lands
and rendered him implicit obedience. The French nobleman exacted only
certain rents, either copyhold quit-rents or feudal services, from the
tenants on his ancestral estates. His tenants were in no sense his
serfs; they owed him no personal service, and resented the payment
of the rent substituted for such service. The patriarchal feeling of
loyalty to the lord had long disappeared, and the French peasant did
not acknowledge any subjection to his landlord, while the Prussian and
Russian serf recognised his bondage to his master.
[Sidenote: Why France experienced the Revolution.]
These considerations help to show why the Revolution, which was after
twenty-six years to inaugurate modern Europe, broke out in France. It
was because the French peasant was more independent, more wealthy, and
better educated than the German serf, that he resented the political
and social privileges of his landlord and the payment of rent, more
than the serf objected to his bondage. It was because France possessed
an enlightened middle class that the peasants and workmen found
leaders. It was because Frenchmen had been in the possession of a great
measure of personal freedom that they were ready to strike a blow
for political liberty, and eventually promulgated the idea of social
equality. The ideas of the sovereignty of the people, of nationality
and of personal liberty, did not originate in France. They are as
old as civilisation. But they had been clouded in the Middle Ages by
feudalism, and, after the Reformation, had been succeeded by different
political conceptions, which had crystallised in the eighteenth century
into the doctrines of the supremacy of the State, of the arbitrary rule
of benevolent or enlightened despots. England and Holland had developed
separately from the rest of the Western World. For reasons lying deep
in their internal history and their geographical position, they had rid
themselves alike of feudalism and absolute monarchy; they had developed
a sense of their independent nationality, and had recognised the
importance of personal freedom. In England especially, the abolition
of the relics of feudalism in the seventeenth century had placed the
English farmers and peasants in a different economical position from
their fellows on the Continent. There existed in England none of the
invidious distinctions between nobleman and _roturier_ in the matter
of bearing national burdens, which had survived in France, and, though
owing to the curiosities of the franchise the larger proportion of
Englishmen had but a very small share in electing the representatives
of the people, the government carried on as it was by a small oligarchy
of great families possessed an appearance of political liberty, and of
a wisely-balanced machine for administrative purposes.
[Sidenote: Intellectual movement of the eighteenth century.]
Nor must the influence of intellectual ideas, as bearing on problems
which the French Revolution was to force on the attention of the more
backward and more oppressed nations of Europe, be underrated. The
great French writers of the eighteenth century—Voltaire, Montesquieu,
Diderot, and Rousseau—had been deeply impregnated with the ideas of
Locke and the English political thinkers of his school. In their
different lines they insisted that government existed for the good
of the governed, and investigated the origins of government and the
relations of man in the social state. It was their speculations which
altered the character of absolute monarchy and based its retention on
its benevolent purposes; they, too, insisted upon the rights of man to
preserve his personal freedom, as long as it did not clash with the
maintenance and security of civil society. The great French writers of
the eighteenth century exercised by their works a smaller influence on
the outbreak and actual course of the French Revolution than has been
generally supposed. The causes of the movement were chiefly economical
and political, not philosophical or social: its rapid development was
due to historical circumstances, and mainly to the attitude of the
rest of Europe. But the text-books of its leaders were the works of
the French thinkers of the eighteenth century, and if their doctrines
had little actual influence in bringing about the Revolution, they
influenced its development and the extension of its principles
throughout Europe. It is curious to contrast the opinions of the great
French writers of the middle of the eighteenth century, whose arguments
mainly affected the general conceptions of man living in society,
that is, of government, with the views advocated by the great German
writers of the end of the century, who concentrated their attention
upon man in his individual capacity for culture and self-improvement.
Schiller, Goethe, Kant, and Herder were, further, more cosmopolitan
than German. The problems of man and his intellectual and artistic
development proved more attractive to the great German thinkers than
the difficulties presented by the economical, social, and political
diversities of different classes of society. Goethe, for instance,
understood the signification of the French Revolution, and was much
interested in its effects on the human race, but he cared very little
about its impression on Germany.
[Sidenote: Morality and Religion in the eighteenth century.]
Finally, the low state of morality in the eighteenth century had sapped
the earnestness in the cause of humanity of men of all classes in all
countries. Disbelief in the Christian religion was general in both the
Protestant and Catholic countries of the Continent. The immorality
of most of the prelates in Catholic countries was notorious, and was
equalled by their avowed contempt for the doctrines of the religion
they professed to teach. The Protestant pastors of Germany were quite
as open in their infidelity. In the famous case of Schulz, the pastor
of Gielsdorf, who openly denied Christianity, and taught simply that
morality was necessary, the High Consistory of Berlin held that he was,
nevertheless, still fitted to hold his office as the Lutheran pastor of
his village. Christianity in both Catholic and Protestant countries was
replaced by the vague sentiments of morality, which are best presented
in Rousseau’s _Profession de Foi du Vicaire Savoyard_. In reaction to
this vague and dogmaless morality, there existed many secret societies
and coteries of mystics, such as the Rosati and the Illuminati, who
replaced religion by ornate and symbolical ceremonies.
Such was the political, economical, intellectual and moral state
of Europe in 1789, on the eve of the French Revolution. The whole
continent was to pass through twenty-six years of almost unceasing
war, at the end of which it was to emerge with new conceptions and new
ideals of both political and social life. The new ideas seemed indeed
to be checked, if not destroyed, in 1815, but once inspired into men’s
minds they could not be forgotten, and their subsequent development
forms the history of modern Europe in the nineteenth century.
CHAPTER I
1789
The Treaty of 1756 between France and Austria—The Triple
Alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland, 1788—The
Minor Powers of Europe—Austria: Joseph II.—His Internal
Policy—His Foreign Policy—Russia: Catherine—Poland—France:
Louis XVI.—Spain: Charles IV.—Portugal: Maria I.—Italy—The
Two Sicilies: Ferdinand IV.—Naples—Sicily—Rome: Pope Pius
VI.—Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold—Parma: Duke Ferdinand—Modena:
Duke Hercules III.—Lombardy—Sardinia: Victor Amadeus
III.—Lucca—Genoa—Venice—England: George III.—The Policy
of Pitt—Prussia: Frederick William II.—Policy of
Prussia—Holland—Denmark: Christian VII.—Sweden: Gustavus
III.—The Holy Roman Empire—The Diet—The Electors—College
of Princes—College of Free Cities—The Imperial
Tribunal—The Aulic Council—The Circles—The Princes of
Germany—Bavaria—Baden—Würtemburg—Saxony—Saxe-Weimar—The
Ecclesiastical Princes—Mayence—Trêves—Cologne—The
Petty Princes and Knights of the
Empire—Switzerland—Geneva—Conclusion.
[Sidenote: The Treaty of 1756.]
The states of Europe at the commencement of the year 1789 were ranked
diplomatically in two important groups, the one dominated by the
connection between France, Austria, Spain, and Russia; the other
by the alliance between England, Prussia, and Holland. The great
transformation which had been effected by the treaty between France
and Austria in 1756 in the relationship between the powers of Europe
was the crowning diplomatic event of the eighteenth century. The
arrangements then entered into and the alliances tested in the Seven
Years’ War still subsisted in 1789. But the spirit which lay at the
root of the Austro-French alliance was sensibly modified. The Treaty
of 1756 had never been really popular in either country. In France,
Marie Antoinette, whose marriage with Louis XVI. had set the seal
on the Austrian alliance, was detested as the living symbol of the
hated treaty, as _l’Autrichienne_, the Austrian woman, and the most
accredited political thinkers and writers were always dwelling on
the traditional policy of France, and on the system of Henri IV.,
Richelieu, and Louis XIV., which held the House of Hapsburg to be the
hereditary and the inevitable enemy of the House of Bourbon and of
the French nation. The dislike of the alliance was felt with equal
intensity in Austria by the wealthy and the educated classes. The
Austrian generals resented the inefficacy of the French intervention
during the Seven Years’ War, and the Austrian people attributed its
reverses in that war to it with as much acrimony as if France had
acted as an enemy instead of as an ally. The same sentiment actuated
even the Imperial House. ‘Our natural enemies, travestied as allies,
who do more harm than if they were open enemies;’[1] such is the
language in which Leopold of Tuscany, brother of Marie Antoinette,
characterised the French in a letter written in December 1784 to his
brother, the Emperor Joseph II. The Emperor Joseph was himself of the
same opinion. He preferred his Russian ally, the Empress Catherine,
to his brother-in-law, Louis XVI., King of France, and the tendency
of his foreign policy was to strengthen his friendship with Russia,
even at the expense of sacrificing his alliance with France. Russia,
whose expansion under the great Empress had been enormous since the
conclusion of the Seven Years’ War, cared but little for either of the
allies, and pursued independently its course of steady development.
Catherine had, indeed, during most of the later years of Frederick
the Great, remained in alliance with Prussia, and to some extent had
been on friendly terms with England. But her natural tendency was to
distrust England. In 1780 she had placed herself at the head of the
‘Armed Neutrality,’ which opposed the naval pretensions of England,
and in 1788 she had formally proposed a close quadruple alliance
between Russia, Austria, France, and Spain.
[Sidenote: Prussia, England, and Holland.]
If the relations between France, Russia, and Austria were unsettled,
the Triple Alliance between Prussia, Holland, and England was hardly on
a more stable footing in 1789. Prussia, since the death of Frederick
the Great, had become really decrepit, while apparently remaining a
first-rate military power. Though still preserving the prestige of
its famous King, who died in 1786, and recognising its alliance with
England, Prussia in 1789 exhibited a decaying internal administration,
and a vacillating foreign policy. England had received a heavy blow by
the success of the colonists in North America, and by the Treaty of
Versailles, and the powers of the Continent, while envying her wealth,
held her military power of but small account. This opinion prevailed
even at Berlin, and the new King of Prussia gave many evidences that
the alliance of England was rather distasteful to him than otherwise.
The third member of the alliance, Holland, was in the weakest condition
of all, and it was only by invoking the armed interference of Prussia
that England had maintained the authority of the Prince of Orange, as
Stadtholder, in 1787. Though this interference had led to the formation
of the famous Triple Alliance of 1788, in reality the English and
Prussian statesmen profoundly distrusted each other, while the forcing
of the yoke of the Stadtholder upon them caused the Dutch democratic
party in Holland to abhor the allies and to look for help to France.
[Sidenote: The Minor Powers of Europe.]
The rest of the European states were bound more or less firmly to
the one or the other of the two coalitions. The smaller states of
Germany, aggravated or intimidated by the measures of the Emperor
Joseph II., had rallied to the side of Prussia. In the north,
Denmark, whose reigning house was connected by family ties with the
royal families of England and Prussia, was completely under Russian
influence, while Sweden, under Gustavus III., was actually at war with
Catherine II. Poland, torn by internal dissensions, and threatened
with complete destruction by its neighbours, was awaiting its final
partition. The southern states of Europe were almost entirely bound
to the Franco-Austrian alliance. Spain had been united to France by
the offensive and defensive treaty, known as the ‘Pacte de Famille,’
concluded by the French minister, Choiseul, in 1761, and tested in the
war of American Independence. Portugal, though connected with England,
commercially by the Methuen treaty, and politically by a long course
of protection against Spanish pretensions, was striving by a series
of royal marriages to become the ally of Spain. In Italy, Naples was
ruled by a Spanish prince married to an Austrian princess; Sardinia
was closely allied with France, and the remainder of the peninsula was
mainly under Austrian influence. Turkey, now travelling towards decay,
was looked upon by Russia and Austria as their legitimate prey, and
met with encouragement in resistance, but not with active help, from
England and France.
After thus roughly sketching the general attitude of the powers of
Europe to each other in 1789, it will be well to examine each state
separately before entering on the history of the exciting period which
followed. Great and sweeping alterations were to be effected; many
diplomatic variations were to take place. The most important result of
the period of the French Revolution and of Napoleon was its influence
upon the minds of men, as shown in the growth of certain political
conceptions, which have moulded modern Europe. But great changes were
also brought about in dynasties and in the geographical boundaries of
states, which can only be understood by a knowledge of the condition of
Europe in 1789.
[Sidenote: Austria: Joseph II.]
[Sidenote: Joseph II.: Internal Policy.]
The figure of most importance in the beginning of the year 1789 was
that of the Emperor Joseph II., and his dominions were those in which
an observer would have prophesied a great revolution. Joseph was at
that date a man of forty-seven; he had been elected Emperor in the
place of his father, Francis of Lorraine, in 1765, and succeeded to
the hereditary dominions of the House of Austria on the death of his
mother, Maria Theresa, in 1780. He was, perhaps, the best type of the
class of benevolent despots. A singularly industrious, enlightened, and
able ruler, his ideas were far in advance of those of his age,—so much
in advance, indeed, that his efforts to impose them upon his subjects
brought upon himself hatred instead of gratitude, and among the people
turbulence and insurrection instead of peace and tranquillity. The
history of the Emperor Joseph’s reforms, and of the disturbances which
resulted from them, belongs to an earlier volume of this series. In
1789 the whole of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg
were in a state of ferment. The Emperor’s scheme of welding them into
an Austrian nation, by insisting on the use of the German language,
by simplifying the state of the law and the administration, and
assimilating the various religious and educational institutions, had
roused the fire of local patriotism. In Hungary and in the Tyrol, in
Bohemia, and, above all, in the Austrian Netherlands, or Belgium,
there was declared rebellion, fanned by local prejudices, religious
fanaticism, and the spirit of caste. The first and second of these
causes were chiefly responsible in the Austrian Netherlands, the third
in Hungary. The Belgians, and more especially the Brabançons, were in
arms for their local rights and ancient constitutions, which had been
infringed by the Emperor’s decrees. The Belgian clergy, who looked upon
Joseph as worse than an infidel for his treatment of the Pope and his
suppression of religious houses, were inflamed at the establishment
of an Imperial Seminary in Brussels as a rival to the Roman Catholic
University of Louvain. But in Hungary it was the magnates of the
country who had fought so gallantly for Maria Theresa and saved her
throne, who were in an attitude of open disaffection. This was partly
due to Joseph’s infringement of their Constitution and his removal of
the Iron Crown to Vienna, but still more to his abolition of serfdom.
As has been already stated, serfdom in Europe was practically extinct
in the western part of the Continent, that is, in France, in Belgium,
and on the Rhine, while it increased in intensity steadily towards
the east, and was as bad in Prussia Proper, Poland, and Hungary, as
in Russia. ‘Most merciful Emperor,’ ran a petition from an Hungarian
peasant to Joseph, ‘four days’ forced labour for the seigneur; the
fifth day, fishing for him; the sixth day, hunting with him; and the
seventh belongs to God. Consider, most merciful Emperor, how can I
pay dues and taxes?’[2] The iniquity of serfdom, with its practice of
forced labour, was accentuated in Hungary by the constitutional custom
which exempted the nobility from all taxation. The Emperor Joseph
abolished serfdom in Hungary on 22nd August 1785, and inaugurated a
system of removing feudal burdens, and converting forced labour, by
means of a gradually diminishing tax. The condition of the hereditary
dominions of the House of Hapsburg was thus, in 1789, one of seething
discontent where it was not open rebellion; Belgian burghers and
Hungarian magnates were alike infuriated by the Emperor’s efforts at
reform; and the poor serfs of Hungary and Bohemia and the working men
of Belgium, whom he designed to benefit by direct legislation and
financial measures, were too weak to render him any help. His hope of
creating an Austrian state and an Austrian people out of his scattered
dominions was fated to be thwarted; obstacles of distance, race, and
language, cannot be overcome by legislation, however wise; and the
Emperor’s well-intentioned endeavours nearly lost his House its ancient
patrimony.
[Sidenote: Joseph II. Foreign Policy.]
The foreign policy of the Emperor Joseph II. was dictated by the same
leading principle as his internal reforms—the desire to form his
various territories into a compact state. His schemes to exchange the
Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria in order to unite his possessions in
Swabia with the nucleus of the Hapsburg territories were frustrated by
the policy of Frederick the Great. His attempt to make his authority as
Emperor more than nominal, and to create a real German empire based on
a German patriotic feeling, proved an utter failure. Foiled in these
two projects, the creation of an Austrian compact state, which he
deemed practicable, and the resurrection of a mighty Germany under his
headship, which he acknowledged to be but a dream, Joseph II. turned
his thoughts towards Russia. The ideal of his early manhood had been
his mother’s foe, Frederick the Great of Prussia; the ideal of his
later years was the Empress Catherine of Russia. Both were specimens of
the enlightened despots of the age; both had extended the realms they
ruled; both endeavoured to form their states into compact entities;
both had succeeded in administration and in war; and both were
cynical disciples of the eighteenth-century philosophers. They were
successively his models. It is characteristic of the Emperor Joseph II.
that the only picture in his private cabinet in the Hofburg at Vienna
was a portrait of Frederick; the only picture in his bedroom one of
Catherine. After the death of Frederick the Great, the Emperor Joseph
II., despising his successor, expressed more loudly his admiration for
Catherine. In 1787 he accompanied her in her famous progress to the
Crimea. Fascinated by her personality and dazzled by her projects, the
Emperor was persuaded to ally himself with Russia against the Turks,
and hoped to partition Turkey with her, as his mother, Frederick, and
Catherine had accomplished the first partition of Poland. In 1788 he
accordingly declared war against the Sublime Porte. But he found that
the Turks, in spite of the corruption of their government, were still
no contemptible foes. His own army was demoralised by the misconduct
of the aristocratic officers; disease decimated his troops; and the
Emperor Joseph returned from the campaign of 1788 with the seeds of
mortal illness in his system, but with his determination to pursue the
war unabated.
[Sidenote: Russia: Catherine.]
[Sidenote: Poland.]
Russia, the chosen ally of Joseph II., was in 1789 ruled by the Empress
Catherine II. This great monarch, though by birth a princess of the
petty German state of Anhalt-Zerbst, ranks with Peter the Great as a
founder of the Russian Empire; more Russian than the Russians, she
understood the importance of the development of her adopted country
geographically towards the Baltic and the Black Sea, and the capacity
of her people to support her in her enterprises. She was at this time
sixty years of age, in full possession of her remarkable powers, and
having ruled for twenty-seven years, she had fortified her authority
by experience. Peter the Great had seen the absolute necessity that
the Russian Empire should have access to the sea, and had built Saint
Petersburg; Catherine had moved southward and extended her dominions
to the Black Sea. She hoped to make the Baltic and the Black Sea
Russian lakes, and on that account was the consistent and watchful
enemy of Sweden and the Turks. Upon the western frontier of Russia
lay Poland. The natural policy of Russia was to maintain and even to
strengthen Poland as a buffer between Russia and the military powers
of Austria and Prussia. But the extraordinary Constitution of Poland,
which provided for the election of a powerless king, and recognised
the right of civil war and the power of any nobleman to forbid any
measure proposed at the Diet by the exercise of what was called the
_liberum veto_, kept the unfortunate country in a state of anarchy,
unable either to defend or to oppose. It might have been possible to
reform the Constitution, and make the Poles an organised nation, but
the neighbouring monarchs considered it easier to share the country
amongst them, and had, under the guidance of Frederick the Great,
carried out in 1772 the first partition, which excluded Poland from the
sea, brought the borders of the three powers, Austria, Prussia, and
Russia, nearer to each other, and caused Russia to become an European
instead of essentially an Eastern monarchy. Catherine grasped the
fact that in her present position Russia must intervene in European
politics, owing to the condition of Poland, and decided to derive what
benefit she could from this circumstance. In her internal government
Catherine was one of the benevolent despots. The patroness of Diderot,
she expressed her admiration for the new doctrines of the Rights of
Man, and even summoned a convention to draw up a Russian constitution.
But she knew that the new doctrines were not applicable to the Russian
people, and would be absurdly inappropriate to the nomad Tartar tribes
which wandered over the southern districts of the Russian Empire. She
was fully aware that their village organisation protected the peasants
from many of the evils which prevailed in seemingly more enlightened
countries, and gave them a right and interest in the soil to which
they were attached. Russia, in fact, had experienced no Reformation,
no Renaissance, no awakening of the ideas of individual and political
liberty, and therefore was eminently fitted for the rule of a
benevolent despot.
[Sidenote: France: Louis XVI.]
Next to the Austro-Russian alliance, the Austro-French alliance, sealed
by the Treaty of 1756, was of the greatest significance to the peace
and welfare of Europe in 1789. As has been said, in neither country
was the alliance popular; France and Austria were hereditary enemies;
classical policy in both courts favoured a resumption of this enmity;
the friendship was rather dynastic than national, the work of Kaunitz
and Maria Theresa, the Abbé de Bernis, Madame de Pompadour, and Louis
XV. France still appeared a very powerful nation. Its intervention in
the American War of Independence had largely contributed to England’s
loss of her American colonies, and the Treaty of Versailles in 1783 had
involved a confession that England was beaten by her cession of the
West India islands of St. Lucia and Tobago. But in spite of her seeming
power, France was from political and economic causes really very weak.
She had been unable in 1787 to effectually support the republican and
French party in Holland, and had been forced to allow England and
Prussia to reinstate the Stadtholder, the Prince of Orange. In spite
of her alliance with Austria, she had been obliged in pursuance of
a peace policy, made necessary by her financial condition, to draw
near to England, and had made a commercial treaty with her in 1786.
The weakness of France arose from internal circumstances. The State
and the Court were financially identical. The Court was extravagant,
and the result was a chronic national deficit. Efforts had been made
to meet this deficit, but all expedients, even partial bankruptcy,
had failed. It was evident that a systematic attempt must be made to
rearrange the finances by introducing a regular scheme of taxation
to take the place of the feudal arrangements for filling the royal
treasury, which with some modifications still survived. But a regular
scheme of taxation, which should abolish feudal privileges, and make
the government responsible to the nation for its expenditure, could
not be established without the consent of the people, and the educated
classes, who were both numerous and prosperous, claimed a voice in its
establishment. The feeling of political discontent went deeper. The
French people had outgrown their system of government; the peasants and
farmers resented the existence of the economic, social, and political
privileges dating from the Middle Ages, which had survived the duties
originally accompanying them; the bourgeois argued that they should
have a share in regulating the affairs of the State; the educated
classes sympathised with both. The day for benevolent despotism was
over in France; Louis XVI. was benevolent in disposition, but too weak
to reform the system under which he ruled; and it was the system, not
the person of the monarch, which the French people disliked; it was the
system as a whole which they had outgrown.
[Sidenote: Spain: Charles IV.]
Much of the strength of France rested on its intimate alliance with
Spain. The two great Bourbon houses had been closely united by the
‘Pacte de Famille’ concluded in 1761, which bound them in an offensive
and defensive alliance. Spain had loyally fulfilled her part of the
bargain, and had suffered much in the War of American Independence
against England. Spain had had the good fortune to be ruled by one of
the most enlightened of the benevolent despots, Charles III., whose
minister, Aranda, was one of the greatest statesmen of his century.
Aranda is best known from his persecution of the Jesuits, who had
spread their influence over the minds of the Spanish people so far
as to be the dictators of education and opinion. Their expulsion
contributed to the power of the Crown, which undertook the direction
of every form of national energy. Aranda was a great administrator;
he spent vast sums on the improvement of communications and on public
works, and he built up a powerful Spanish navy. The two evils which
had depressed the fame of Spain, the personal lethargy of the people,
due to the stamping out of liberty of thought by the Inquisition, and
the poverty, caused by the influx of gold from the Spanish colonies,
which prevented any encouragement of national industry, were however
too great for any administrator to subdue, without a national uprising
and the development of a national love for liberty. Aranda was ably
helped by Campomanes, who founded a national system of education to
take the place of the Jesuits’ schools and colleges, by Jovellanos, a
great jurist and political economist, by Cabarrus, a skilful financier,
who founded the bank of St. Charles, and developed a system of national
credit, and by Florida Blanca, who superintended the department of
foreign affairs, and succeeded Aranda in supreme power in 1774. Charles
III. died on 12th December 1788, and his successor, Charles IV., whose
weakness of character was manifested throughout the period from 1789 to
1815, commenced his reign by maintaining Florida Blanca at the head of
Spanish affairs, with Cabarrus and other experienced ministers.
[Sidenote: Portugal: Maria I.]
Portugal was the intimate ally of England as Spain was of France. The
hereditary connection of Portugal and England dated back for many
centuries, and had been strengthened by the Methuen Treaty in 1703,
which had made Portugal largely dependent on England. The great
Portuguese minister, Pombal, who had commenced the persecution of
the Jesuits and had effected internal and administrative reforms,
comparable to those of Aranda in Spain, had been disgraced in 1777,
but the offices of State were filled by his pupils and managed on the
principle, which he had initiated, of advancing the prosperity of the
people. Pombal, while holding the strongest views on the importance
of maintaining the royal absolutism, believed in the modern doctrines
of reform; he had abolished slavery, encouraged education, and in
the received ideas of political economy had encouraged by means of
protection manufactures and agriculture. The essential weakness of
Portugal rested, like that of Spain, on the exhaustion and consequent
lethargy of its people; the Jesuits and the Inquisition had stamped out
freedom of thought. Financially, also, its condition resembled that
of Spain, for the sovereign derived such wealth from Brazil as to be
independent of taxes, levied on the people. Politically the aim of the
House of Braganza, during the latter part of the eighteenth century,
had been to endeavour to free itself from dependence on England by
uniting closely through inter-marriages with the reigning family in
Spain. Queen Maria I., who had succeeded Joseph, the patron of Pombal,
in 1777, was a fanatical lady of weak intellect, and in 1789 the royal
power was in the hands of the heir-apparent, Prince John, who was
recognised as Regent some years later, and eventually succeeded to the
throne in 1816, as John VI.
[Sidenote: Italy.]
[Sidenote: Naples: Ferdinand IV.]
[Sidenote: Sicily.]
[Sidenote: Rome: Pope Pius VI.]
[Sidenote: Tuscany: Grand Duke Leopold.]
[Sidenote: Parma: Duke Ferdinand.]
[Sidenote: Modena: Duke Hercules III.]
[Sidenote: Lombardy.]
[Sidenote: Sardinia: Victor Amadeus III.]
[Sidenote: Lucca: Republic.]
[Sidenote: Genoa: Republic.]
[Sidenote: Venice.]
Italy, in the eighteenth century, was composed of a number of small
states. The idea of Italian unity lived only in the minds of the great
Italian writers and thinkers; it met with no support from the powers
of Europe. Italy was still the home of music and the arts, which
were fostered by the numerous small Courts; but politically, owing
to its subdivision, it hardly counted as a power, and its diplomacy
had little weight in the European State system. It was entirely under
the influence of France and Austria, and showed the tendencies of the
century in the good government of most of the petty rulers. The most
important of the Italian states was the kingdom of the Two Sicilies,
which comprised the southern part of the peninsula and the island of
Sicily. The kingdom had been granted to Ferdinand IV., when his father,
the celebrated Don Carlos, succeeded as Charles III. to the throne
of Spain in 1759. It was in Naples that Charles III. had commenced
his career as a reforming monarch, and the great Neapolitan minister,
Tanucci, continued to administer the affairs of the kingdom in a most
enlightened fashion during the early years of the new monarch’s reign.
His policy was to check the feudal instincts of the Neapolitan barons,
whom he deprived of the lucrative right of administering justice, and
thus to strengthen the influence of the Crown; and he also opposed
the pretensions of the Pope, and concurred in the suppression of
the Jesuits. The power thus acquired for the Crown was wisely used;
the financial system was revised, education was encouraged, and an
attempt was made to procure a general reform of the laws. The young
publicist, Filangieri, whose _Science of Legislation_ contained the
most enlightened views on political economy and government, and who
ranks next to Montesquieu as a typical political thinker of the
eighteenth century, was a Neapolitan, and his speculations largely
influenced the current of Italian thought. Sicily, however, remained
to a great extent untouched by the influence of the great Neapolitan
minister owing to its insular jealousy and the maintenance of its
mediæval parliament. Ferdinand IV., in 1768, married Maria Carolina,
the ablest daughter of the Empress Maria Theresa, who at once assumed
the most entire sway over her ill-educated and indolent husband. She
secured the dismissal of Tanucci, whom she disliked on much the same
grounds that her sister, Marie Antoinette, disliked the reforming
French ministers, Turgot and Necker, in 1776, and after an interval
replaced him by Acton, a native of France of Irish descent, who, owing
to the temper of his patroness, was not able to continue efficiently
the work of Tanucci. The States of the Church, including the Legations
of Bologna and Ferrara and the principalities of Benevento and Ponte
Corvo, were also governed in accordance with the enlightened ideas of
the eighteenth century. The Papacy had much fallen in influence, and
had been forced to comply with the demands of Pombal, Choiseul, Aranda,
and Tanucci for the suppression of its spiritual mainstay, the order of
the Jesuits; but it nevertheless maintained its temporal sovereignty
in Italy. Giovanni Angelo Braschi, who had been elected Pope in 1775,
and taken the title of Pius VI., was a man of singular ability and
courtly manners. But he had to assent to vast reforms in Tuscany,
which seriously affected the wealth of the Church in that part of the
country, and had been unable, in spite of a personal visit to Vienna,
to persuade Joseph II. to alter his policy towards the Papacy. His most
notable internal measures in the Papal States were the draining of the
Pontine marshes, and his reconstitution of the Clementine Museum at
Rome, which he placed under the charge of the eminent antiquary, Ennius
Quirinus Visconti. Tuscany flourished under the rule of the Grand Duke
Leopold, brother and eventual successor of Joseph II., the ablest
administrator of all the benevolent despots. His reforms extended in
every direction; with the help of Scipio de Ricci, Bishop of Pistoia,
he reduced the number of bishoprics and monasteries; he drained many of
the marshes, and so benefited agriculture; he reorganised education and
encouraged the Universities of Pisa and Siena. But his greatest reforms
were legal and economic. Tuscany having originated from a number of
mediæval republics, had been hitherto administered as a collection of
semi-independent cities and districts, with their own laws and local
finances. Leopold was one of the first monarchs to project a uniform
code of laws for his state, which he intrusted to the great jurist,
Lampredi, to compile, and he abolished all personal privileges before
the law, torture, the right of asylum for malefactors, confiscation of
the property of condemned malefactors, and secret denunciations. In
economics he was the pupil of the French physiocrats, and the friend of
the Marquis de Mirabeau, the ‘Ami des hommes,’ and in consonance with
their doctrines he swept away all the internal customs duties and other
restrictions on industry and commerce. Lastly, Leopold, seeing that
his state was not strong enough to carry on a real war, abolished the
Tuscan army, to the great advantage of his finances. Next to Tuscany,
the best-governed state in Italy was Parma. Ferdinand, Duke of Parma
and Piacenza, was the only son of Don Philip, the second son of Philip
V. of Spain and Elizabeth Farnese, by Elizabeth of France, daughter
of Louis XV. He was educated by the celebrated French philosopher,
Condillac, and early in his reign showed the influence of the best
eighteenth century ideas. He had succeeded his father in 1765, and
continued his minister, a Frenchman, Du Tillot, Marquis of Felino, in
office. Du Tillot, though working in a smaller sphere, was as great a
reformer as Pombal and Tanucci. He brought about the suppression of
the Inquisition in Parma, improved the internal administration, and
encouraged education so greatly that the University of Parma, under the
management of the learned scholar, Paciaudi, became one of the most
famous in Europe. In 1769 Duke Ferdinand married Maria Amelia, daughter
of the Empress Maria Theresa, who two years later secured the dismissal
of Du Tillot from office. This dismissal was not, however, followed
by a reaction, though it put a close to the progress of reform, and
Parma, under the administration, first of a Spaniard, Llanos, and then
of a Frenchman, Mauprat, retained its reputation as a well governed
state. It was otherwise with Modena, where the last Duke of the House
of Este, Hercules III., reigned. This prince had succeeded to the
duchies of Modena, Reggio, and Mirandola in 1780, when already a man
of fifty-three, and had added to them by marriage the principalities
of Massa and Carrara. His only daughter and heiress, Maria Beatrice,
was married to the Austrian Archduke Ferdinand, younger brother of
the Emperor Joseph, and Governor-General of Lombardy. Duke Hercules
was a superstitious and avaricious ruler, whose chief care was to
amass money, and, politically, he followed out the wishes of Austria.
While the House of Austria, by its scions or by marriages, ruled the
greater part of Italy indirectly, it possessed the direct sovereignty
of Lombardy, or, more accurately, of the Milanese and Mantua. This
province profited by the salutary policy of Joseph II., and was
administered, under the governor-generalship of the Archduke Ferdinand,
by a great statesman, Count Firmian, who understood and carried out the
most important reforms. His patronage of the arts and of education was
especially remarkable; he laboured ardently to restore the efficiency
of the Universities of Milan and Pavia, and appointed Beccaria, the
celebrated philanthropist, Professor of Political Economy at the
former, and Volta, the equally celebrated man of science, Professor
of Physics at the latter. The only other monarchy of Italy, that of
Sardinia, was more closely related to France than to Austria. Its
king, Victor Amadeus III., had married a Spanish princess, and two
of his daughters were married to the two brothers of Louis XVI. of
France—Monsieur, the Comte de Provence, and the Comte d’Artois. His
dominions comprised the island of Sardinia, Piedmont, Savoy, and Nice,
and it was a great subject of complaint to his Piedmontese subjects
that he unduly favoured his French-speaking province of Savoy. He, too,
was influenced by the spirit of his century; he encouraged agriculture
and commerce; he patronised literature and science; he built the
Observatory at Turin, and founded academies of science and fine arts;
and he undertook great public works, of which the most important was
the improvement of the harbour of Nice. But in one matter he pursued an
opposite policy to the Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany, for he increased
and reorganised his army, and constructed fortifications of the most
modern description at Tortona and Alessandria. Lastly must be noticed
three Italian republics, survivals of the Middle Ages. Of these the
smallest was the Republic of Lucca, which was entirely surrounded by
the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. Its trade suffered from the encouragement
given by the Grand Duke Leopold to Leghorn; but, on the whole, it was
well governed and prosperous. It was otherwise with the two great
aristocratic republics, in which the long continuance of oligarchical
government had stamped out all vestiges of political liberty. The
Republic of Genoa, of which Raphael di Ferrari was Doge in 1789, was in
utter decay. Its people were poverty-stricken; its trade had gone to
Leghorn and Nice; and its laws and customs were unreformed. It was so
weak that it had been unable to subdue the rebels in Corsica, who had
risen under Paoli for the right of self-government, and it had ended by
ceding the island to France in 1768. The Republic of Venice, of which
the Doge in 1789 was Paul Renier, had not fallen so low in the eyes of
Europe. Its possessions on the mainland, which extended from Verona to
the Tyrol and along the east coast of the Adriatic Sea, and included
the Ionian Islands, were administered for the benefit of the Venetian
oligarchy, and supplied it with wealth. From Dalmatia was raised a
considerable army, but the administration was wholly selfish, and did
not keep pace in enlightenment with that of Lombardy, Parma, Tuscany,
and Naples. On the whole, where monarchy existed in Italy, it tended in
the eighteenth century to benevolent despotism; and such rule was far
more beneficial to the people than that of the antiquated republics.
Politically, the whole country might be reckoned as a factor in the
Franco-Austrian alliance.
[Sidenote: England: George III.]
[Sidenote: The Policy of Pitt.]
The chief power of the Triple Alliance, which balanced the
loosely-defined league of Russia, France, and Austria, was England.
The severe blow which had been struck by the revolt of her American
colonies had made Great Britain appear weaker than she really was to
the powers of the Continent. The Treaty of Versailles, by which she
had been obliged to make cessions to France, seemed to have set the
seal on her humiliation. But in reality her finances were more affected
than her fighting strength, and the English navy, which, from her
insular position, must always constitute the principal element of her
force, was as excellent as ever. The policy of the younger Pitt, who
had come into office in 1783, was one of peace and retrenchment. The
country had lasted well through the financial strain of the American
War, and the chief aim of the minister was to allow its vast commercial
and industrial resources to expand. As a pupil of Adam Smith, Pitt
understood the great principles of political economy, and the most
significant part of his foreign policy was his conclusion of the
Commercial Treaty with France. A fiscal system, far in advance of that
in any continental country, enabled the English Government to draw on
the wealth of the nation more effectively than any other government,
if the money was needed for patriotic purposes. In spite of his love
of peace, Pitt was induced by his first Foreign Secretary, the Duke of
Leeds, to take an active part in European politics, and was eventually
led by the state of affairs in Holland to enter into the Triple
Alliance. At home, England was unaffected by the intellectual movement
which led to the French Revolution. She had in the previous century
got rid of the relics of feudalism, which pressed so heavily on the
continental farmer and peasant, and had won the boons of individual and
commercial liberty, and of equality before the law; while politically,
though her government was an oligarchy, supported by the class of
wealthy merchants and traders, an opportunity was afforded through
the existence of a free press and of the system of election, however
hampered by antiquated franchises, for public opinion to make itself
felt.
[Sidenote: Prussia: Frederick William II.]
Prussia, the other principal member of the Triple Alliance, contrasted
in every way with England. Seemingly, owing to the prestige of
Frederick the Great’s victories and that able monarch’s careful
organisation of his army, Prussia was the first military state in
Europe; in reality, her reputation was greater than her actual power.
Prussia was weak where England was strong. Prussia had no financial
system worthy of the name, no industrial wealth, and no national bank;
her only resources for war were a certain quantity of specie stored
up in Berlin. The Prussian Government was an absolutism, in which the
monarch’s will was supreme; its administration was based on feudalism,
of which England had entirely and France had practically got rid, with
all its mediæval incidents of serfdom, privilege of the nobility, and
social and commercial inequalities. The Prussian army was not national;
the soldiers were treated as slaves, and the officers, who were all of
noble birth, were tyrants in the maintenance of military discipline.
[Sidenote: Policy of Prussia.]
Frederick the Great was one of the finest types of the benevolent
despot of the eighteenth century, but in him the belief in the
importance of his despotic power outweighed his benevolence. While
wishing for the prosperity of the people, he deliberately maintained
the authority of the nobility, and discouraged any desire for change
on the part of the agriculturists or citizens. The former were left
at the disposal of their lords, the latter trammelled by antiquated
civic constitutions. The weakness of Prussia was not only inherent in
its government, but was also due to geographical causes. Its component
parts were scattered; its Rhenish duchies and East Friesland were
separated from its main territories by many German states; its central
districts, the Marks of Brandenburg, were sparsely populated, and cut
off from the sea; its largest provinces, Prussia Proper, Pomerania,
Silesia, and Prussian Poland were, in spite of German and French
Huguenot colonies, mainly Slavonic, and as backward in civilisation as
other Slavonic races in the eighteenth century. In Russia, however,
the Slavonic population in its barbarism yet retained sufficient local
organisation to make its lot fairly endurable; in eastern Prussia,
and especially in Prussian Poland, the people had been brought
into contact with the mediæval and Latin civilisation, and were
consequently treated as absolute serfs without the relief afforded by
local institutions. The policy of Prussia, as laid down by Frederick
the Great, had both Prussian and German aspirations, and in both was
utterly selfish. The example set by the cynical monarch in the Silesian
wars had left a deep impress on the minds of Prussian statesmen, and
the maxims of justice and international law were subordinated by them
to expediency. The Prussian policy of Frederick the Great culminated
in the first partition of Poland, which he had suggested, by means
of which Prussia united her eastern province of Prussia Proper to
Brandenburg, and cut off Poland from the sea, and the aim of his
successors was to pursue this path of aggrandisement, and, by further
annexations, to connect Silesia directly with Prussia Proper. The
German policy of Prussia was to assume the leadership of the Empire
by pretending the greatest zeal for the rights of the Princes of the
Empire, and posing as their protector, and it was on this ground that
Frederick the Great formed the League of the Princes. The hereditary
enemy of Prussia was Austria, which, though distinctly injured by
the conquest of Silesia, still retained the chief influence over the
Empire, and also showed a tendency to check the designs on Poland.
It was Frederick the Great of Prussia who had thwarted the Emperor’s
scheme of exchanging the Austrian Netherlands for Bavaria, and he
intrigued against Austria at the Courts both of Russia and France. It
was as a counterblow to the Franco-Austro-Russian alliance that Prussia
intervened in Holland, at the request of England, and formed the Triple
Alliance with England and Holland in 1788. King Frederick William
II. of Prussia, who succeeded his famous uncle in 1786, was a man of
feeble intellect and undecided nature, but he had thoroughly imbibed
the classic ideas of Prussian policy, and regarded Austria as the
inevitable foe of Prussia, to be duped and taken advantage of on every
possible occasion. His chief minister, Hertzberg, was a consistent
enemy of Austria, but owing to the curious character of the king, the
real power of the State rested not with the minister but with the royal
favourites, of whom the chief at the end of 1788 were Bischofswerder
and Lucchesini.
[Sidenote: Holland.]
Holland was the link which bound England and Prussia together. Its
military power was of no account, but the wealth of its inhabitants,
derived from their vast commercial expansion in Asia and aptitude
for banking, made the Republic of the United Provinces of the
greatest importance. The Seven Provinces preserved the most complete
autonomy; only the veriest semblance of federation held them
together. Practically, the only bond of union was in the power of the
Stadtholder, which had been restored in 1747. In the more wealthy
provinces, such as Holland, the commercial aristocracy, which filled
the ranks of the local governments, resented the position of the
Stadtholder, who held the command-in-chief of the army and navy; but in
the poorer and agricultural provinces, such as Friesland and Groningen,
the landed aristocracy generally supported the Stadtholderate. In 1780
the United Provinces had joined in the Neutral League of the North,
invented by Catherine of Russia to break the commercial supremacy of
England, and in the war which followed they had suffered severe losses,
and had been compelled to cede Negapatam in India to England in 1783 on
the conclusion of peace. The Stadtholder, William V., Prince of Orange,
in whose family the office had been declared hereditary, was vehemently
accused of favouring England during this war, and when peace was
declared a movement was set on foot, headed by the authorities of the
Province of Holland, to oust him from his position, and to draw up a
new constitution for the Dutch Netherlands on the same lines as that of
the United States of America. This movement grew to its height in 1786;
a French Legion, commanded by the Comte de Maillebois, was raised; the
Stadtholder had to fly from the Hague, and the armed intervention of
France was requested. But, as has been said, France, in spite of her
seeming power, was too weak to intervene, and the Dutch patriots were
abandoned to their fate. On the other side, that of the Stadtholder,
England, through its able ambassador at the Hague, Sir James Harris,
afterwards Lord Malmesbury, induced Prussia to act. England and Prussia
had dynastic and political reasons for this conduct. The Stadtholder
was, through his mother, a first cousin of George III., and had married
a sister of Frederick William II., while politically, the acquisition
of Holland to the Franco-Austrian alliance, through the expulsion of
the Stadtholder, would bring nearly the whole of Europe into that
system, and would practically enclose the Austrian Netherlands or
Belgium. In September 1787, therefore, a Prussian army, under the Duke
of Brunswick, had occupied Amsterdam, and placed the Stadtholder firmly
in power; the Dutch patriots fled to France; the Legion of Maillebois
was disbanded; and in 1788 the work was consummated by the signature of
the Triple Alliance.
[Sidenote: Denmark: Christian VII.]
[Sidenote: Sweden: Gustavus III.]
The two northern kingdoms, Denmark and Sweden, had adhered to the
Neutral League against England in 1780, but for generations a bitter
animosity had existed between them. Denmark, which in 1789 included
Norway, was in an extremely prosperous condition. The philanthropic
ideas of the eighteenth century had made great way, and on 20th
June 1788 a royal ordinance had destroyed the last vestige of
serfdom. Efforts were made to improve the condition of the people by
reorganising the state of the finances, law and education, and progress
was made in every direction. These reforms were not the work of the
King, Christian VII., who had fallen into a state of dotage, but of
the Prince Royal, afterwards Frederick VI., and of his minister, Count
Andrew Bernstorff, the nephew of the greatest Danish statesman of the
eighteenth century. Sweden, which in 1789 included the greater part
of Finland as well as Swedish Pomerania and the island of Rügen, was
under the sway of one of the most enlightened rulers of the century,
Gustavus III. That monarch had in 1772, by a _coup d’état_, overthrown
the power of the Swedish Estates, with their division into the two
parties of the Caps and the Hats, subsidised respectively by Russia
and France. He had made use of his absolutism to carry out some of
the benevolent ideas of the time. He had abolished torture, regulated
taxation, encouraged commerce and industry, and diminished, where he
did not destroy, the privileges of the nobility. Had he contented
himself with these internal reforms he would have won the lasting
gratitude of the Swedish people, but he insisted on playing a part
in continental politics, which involved the maintenance of a large
army and the consequent exhaustion of the people. Though he too had
joined the League of the North in 1780, he afterwards assumed a
strong anti-Russian attitude, and resolved to take advantage of the
Russo-Turkish war in order to regain some of his lost provinces.
Accordingly he invaded Russia in the summer of 1788, while his fleet
threatened St. Petersburg.
[Sidenote: The Empire.]
[Sidenote: The Diet.]
[Sidenote: College of Electors.]
[Sidenote: College of Princes.]
[Sidenote: College of Free Cities.]
Hitherto a sketch has been given of states, which in 1789 possessed a
certain unity, and were able to play a part as independent countries
of more or less weight in European politics. It was otherwise with
the Holy Roman Empire, which still remained in the same condition,
and was ruled in the same manner, as had been arranged at the Treaty
of Westphalia in 1648. True Germany, that is Germany to the west of
the Oder, had been under this arrangement split up into a number of
independent sovereignties, loosely bound together as the Holy Roman
Empire. The number of these petty states caused the Empire to be, from
a military point of view, utterly inefficient; the bond was too loose
to allow of general internal reforms or of a consistent foreign policy;
and the federal arrangements were too cumbrous and unwieldy to allow
of Germany ranking as a great power. The Imperial Diet or Reichstag
consisted of three colleges, and a majority was required in each of
the upper colleges to agree to a resolution, which, when confirmed by
the Emperor, became a _conclusum_ of the Empire. The first of these
colleges was that of the eight Electors, three ecclesiastical, the
Elector-Archbishops of Mayence, Trèves, and Cologne, and five lay, the
Electors of Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Hanover, who were also Kings of
Hungary, Prussia, and England, the Elector of Saxony, and the Elector
Palatine, who in 1789 was also Elector of Bavaria. The president of
this college was the Elector-Archbishop of Mayence, as Chancellor of
the Empire. The second college was that of the Princes, which consisted
of one hundred voices, thirty-six ecclesiastical and sixty-four
lay. In this college all the Electors had voices under different
designations; Hanover possessed six for different principalities,
Prussia six for the duchy of Guelders, the county of Mœurs, etc.,
Austria three, and so on, while the Kings of Denmark and Sweden also
were represented as Dukes of Holstein and of Pomerania. Less important
princes differing in power from the Landgraves of Hesse, the Margraves
of Baden, and the Duke of Würtemburg to the petty princes of Salm and
Anhalt, possessed single voices, and made up the number of temporal
voters in the college to sixty. The ecclesiastical princes included
thirty-four of the wealthiest bishops and abbots, many of whom ruled
over considerable territories, and of whom the most important were the
Archbishop of Salzburg, the Bishops of Bamberg, Augsburg, Würtzburg,
Spires, Worms, Strasbourg, Basle, Constance, Paderborn, Hildesheim,
and Münster, and the Abbots of Elwangen, Kempten, and Stablo. The
other six voices were called collegiate, and representatives to hold
them were elected by the petty lay and ecclesiastical sovereigns
who abounded in Franconia, Swabia, and Westphalia, to the number of
four lay and two ecclesiastical representatives. The presidency of
this college was held alternately by the Archduke of Austria and the
Archbishop of Salzburg. The third or inferior college was that of the
free cities, and any opposition on its part could prevent a decision
arrived at by the two upper or superior colleges being presented
to the Emperor for his assent as a _conclusum_ of the Empire. It
consisted of the representatives of fifty-two imperial free cities,
divided into two ‘benches,’ of which the Bench of Westphalia included
Frankfort-on-the-Main, Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle, Hamburg, Bremen, and
Lübeck, and the Bench of Swabia included Nuremberg, Ratisbon, Ulm,
and Augsburg. The presidency of this college belonged to the city
of Ratisbon, in which the Diet held its sittings. By this elaborate
federative system, all sense of German unity was lost; the electors,
princes, and free cities were represented only by delegates; the
smaller states felt themselves swamped and were obliged to look to a
great power, Austria or France, Prussia or Hanover, to preserve their
political independence.
[Sidenote: The Imperial Tribunal.]
[Sidenote: The Emperor.]
[Sidenote: The Aulic Council.]
[Sidenote: The Circles.]
The other important institution of the Empire, the Imperial Tribunal
or Reichskammergericht, which sat at Wetzlar and was intended to
settle disputes between the German sovereigns, had also fallen into
desuetude. Its venality and procrastination became proverbial, and it
possessed no machinery to put its decrees into force. At the head of
the Empire was the Emperor, who was elected and crowned with all the
elaborate ceremonial of the Middle Ages. The office had been, with one
exception, conferred on the head of House of Austria, since the Treaty
of Westphalia, but it brought little actual authority on the holder.
It was as ruler of the hereditary dominions of the House of Hapsburg
that the Emperor exerted some influence, not as an Emperor. Joseph II.,
indeed, endeavoured to be Emperor in more than name, with the result
that Frederick the Great was enabled to form the League of Princes
against him. As the chief Catholic state, Austria, however, possessed
a great influence in the Imperial Diet, for the ecclesiastical members
of the Colleges of Electors and Princes naturally inclined to support
her, and it was on their votes that she relied. She even went so far
as to establish the Aulic Council at Vienna, which intervened in cases
between sovereign princes, and usurped some of the prerogatives of
the Imperial Tribunal of Wetzlar. The executive power of the Empire,
when it had come to a decision, was entrusted to the circles. These
circles each had their own Diet, and it was their duty, for instance,
to raise money and troops when the Empire decided to go to war. Of the
ten circles of the Empire, originally created, one, that of Burgundy,
had been extinguished or nearly so by the conquests of Louis XIV.,
and those situated in the eastern portion were entirely controlled by
the important states of Prussia, Saxony, and Austria. It was only in
Western Germany, in the circles of Westphalia, Franconia, and Swabia
that the organisation was fairly tried, and the result was signal
failure, whenever those circles put their contingents in the field.
It could hardly be otherwise, when, owing to minute subdivision and
divided authority, a single company of soldiers might be raised from
half a dozen different petty sovereigns, each of whom would try to
throw the burden of their maintenance on his colleagues. The Holy Roman
Empire, in short, like other mediæval institutions, had fallen into
decay with the mediæval systems of warfare and religion; some of its
component states, such as Austria and Prussia, or in a lesser degree
Bavaria, might possess a real power; but, as a whole, it was utterly
inefficient to defend itself, and formed a feeble barrier between
France and the kingdoms of Eastern Europe.
[Sidenote: The Princes of Germany.]
[Sidenote: Bavaria.]
[Sidenote: Baden.]
[Sidenote: Würtemburg.]
[Sidenote: Saxony.]
[Sidenote: Saxe-Weimar.]
The impotence of the Empire for offensive and defensive purposes did
not, however, greatly affect the German people; the educated classes
prided themselves on being superior to patriotic impulses, and on being
cosmopolitan rather than German; the poorer classes thought more of
the internal administration which affected them than of the attitude
of the Empire to European politics. The tendency towards benevolent
despotism, which distinguished the greater powers, showed itself also
in the petty states of Germany in the diminution, if not the abolition,
of the ancient Estates and in the restraints placed on the authority
of the nobility. The increased power of the sovereign was generally,
if not universally, used to foster the prosperity of his subjects,
or at least to promote literature and art. A notice of a few of the
principal rulers of Germany will justify this view. Charles Theodore,
the Elector Palatine, who in 1778 had succeeded to the Electorate
of Bavaria, and united once more the territories of the House of
Wittelsbach, was a most enlightened sovereign. In the Palatinate he had
founded a brilliant University at Mannheim, and one of the most famous
picture galleries in Europe at Düsseldorf; in Bavaria he suppressed
some of the numerous convents, which stifled progress, in spite of his
sincere Catholicism. He took as one of his ministers the celebrated
American, Benjamin Thompson, whom he created Count Rumford, and that
man of science and learning endeavoured to suppress mendacity, and made
efforts to bring material comforts within reach of the very poorest.
Nevertheless, in some points, the Elector Charles Theodore showed
himself a bigot; he left education entirely in the hands of the Roman
Catholic priesthood and ex-Jesuits, and he allowed the Protestants in
his dominions to be persecuted. The Margrave Charles Frederick, who
in 1771 reunited in his person the two margraviates of Baden-Baden
and Baden-Durlach, was a more thoroughly enlightened prince. He was
truly a benevolent despot; he was a student of political economy, on
which he himself wrote a treatise, and applied its principles to his
little state; he established a scheme of primary education; and on 23d
July 1783 he abolished serfdom in his dominions, while maintaining
the royal _corvées_ and the prohibition for a subject to leave the
country without obtaining his permission. The Duke Charles Eugène of
Würtemburg formed a contrast to his neighbours. He established, like
them, his own absolutism, but he used his power to impose heavy taxes
and raise an army out of all proportion to the size of his duchy.
He treated his subjects like slaves, and his administration was so
cruel that the Aulic Council threatened to take measures against him.
Nevertheless, he was a patron of literature and the arts. He built a
theatre at Stuttgart and founded the Academy of Fine Arts there, and
he defrayed the expense of the education of the poet Schiller, who,
however, afterwards satirised him and fled to Weimar. Yet Charles
Eugène of Würtemburg appears an enlightened monarch to such princes as
Duke Charles of Deux-Ponts (Zweibrücken), whose successor, Maximilian
Joseph, was to succeed the Elector Palatine, Charles Theodore, and
to become the first King of Bavaria, for that prince sacrificed his
people to his passion for the chase, and to William IX., Landgrave
of Hesse-Cassel, who sold his subjects by the hundred to the English
Government to carry on the war in America. Going further east, Saxony,
which had ranked among the great states of Germany, was in a state of
decline. The Electors Augustus II. and Augustus III. had been Kings
of Poland, and had ruined their hereditary dominions to support their
royal dignity and position. Fortunately Frederick Augustus, who was
Elector in 1789, had not been elected to the Polish throne, and had
been able to do something for the prosperity of his subjects. He
formed a commission to draw up a code of laws, he abolished torture,
encouraged industry and agriculture, and founded an Academy of Mines.
But he did not go so far, for instance, as the Margrave of Baden, and
made no attempt to suppress serfdom. The glory of Saxony was not,
however, on the eve of the French Revolution its electoral house;
its intellectual capital was not the beautiful city of Dresden. That
place was taken by Weimar, where Duke Charles Augustus of Saxe-Weimar
collected around him the great philosophers and men of letters who made
the German name famous at the end of the eighteenth century and the
beginning of the nineteenth. To his Court resorted the most illustrious
Germans of the time, Goethe and Schiller, Herder, Wieland, and Musæus;
and the University of his state at Jena became the most famous in
Germany. It is not necessary to particularise the other states; it is
enough to say that those in the north were generally very backward,
especially the duchies of Mecklenburg, and that Hanover was left to the
rule of an aristocratic oligarchy, which allowed no reforms, although
its University at Göttingen, founded by George II., took rank with the
best.
[Sidenote: Mayence.]
[Sidenote: Trèves.]
[Sidenote: Cologne.]
The Ecclesiastical States followed also the movement of the century.
The ecclesiastical rulers were often enlightened men, but they were
to a great extent the slaves of their chapters. These chapters were
generally filled by younger sons of the smaller princes, who insisted
on the newly-elected prelates entering into the closest bonds with
them to make no changes in the feudal system in the bishoprics. The
prince-bishops and abbots at the close of the eighteenth century were,
therefore, generally scions of noble houses, such as, for instance,
Francis Joseph, Baron of Roggenbach, Bishop of Basle, Baron Francis
Louis of Erthal, Bishop of Bamberg and Würtzburg, the Baron of Rödt,
Bishop of Constance, the Count of Hoensbroeck, Bishop of Liége,
Count Augustus of Limburg, Bishop of Spires, Count Jerome Colloredo,
Archbishop of Salzburg, and the Baron of Plettenberg, Abbot of Münster.
One curious point deserves notice, that in some instances, Protestant
princes had the right to present to Catholic prince-bishoprics, and
in 1789 the Duke of York was Prince-Bishop of Osnabrück, and Prince
Peter Frederick of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince-Bishop of Lübeck. Of
higher rank and more independent of their chapters were the three
archbishop-electors, who were therefore more able to rule their states
in consonance with the ideas of the century. The chief of these was
Baron Frederick Charles of Erthal, Archbishop-Elector of Mayence, and
Prince-Bishop of Worms, the Chancellor of the Empire _ex officio_. This
great prelate busied himself mostly with his pleasures, but his rank
caused his countenance to be sought by all parties, and his adhesion
to Frederick the Great’s League of Princes was the greatest gain the
King of Prussia made in his anti-Austrian policy. In 1789 he had
completely abandoned the cares of internal and external politics to his
coadjutor Charles, Baron de Dalberg, who was to play a leading part
in the history of Germany during the period of the French Revolution
and Napoleon. The Archbishop-Elector of Trèves in 1789 was Clement
Wenceslas, a Saxon prince, and an excellent ruler, who, in 1783,
even issued an edict of tolerance, allowing men of any religion to
settle in his state, and exercise any trade or profession there. The
last Elector-Archbishop was the Archduke Maximilian, the youngest
brother of the Emperor Joseph, Archbishop of Cologne, who shared his
brother’s liberal opinions, and patronised his predecessor’s creation,
the University of Bonn, which had been founded in opposition to the
ultramontane University of Cologne, for the encouragement of the modern
developments of science. The tendency of all these governments, lay and
clerical, was to promote the prosperity of the people; Joseph II. was
but the type of the German princes of his time; all wished to do good
for the people, but not by them; their characters differed widely, from
the enlightened Margrave of Baden to the hunting Duke of Deux-Ponts;
but in their different ways and in different degrees they generally
meant well. But, while the more important princes showed the tendency
of the century, their poorer contemporaries were unable to do so.
They were mostly in debt, owing to their efforts to rival the wealthy
princes, and in order to raise money resorted to all the devices of
mediæval feudalism. The few villages over which they ruled suffered
from this tyranny, and it was always possible to know when a traveller
crossed the frontier into one of these ‘duodecimo duchies.’ Beneath the
petty princes were the Ritters or Knights of the Empire, who abounded
in Franconia and Swabia. These knights had no representation in the
Imperial Diet, and were consequently dependent directly on the Emperor.
Their poverty made them take service with the wealthy princes; and
to quote but two instances, Stein, the great Prussian minister, and
Würmser, the celebrated Austrian general, were both Knights of the
Empire. The result of this minute subdivision of Germany was to destroy
the sense of national patriotism; which was not to rise again until
after Germany had passed through the mould of Napoleon’s domination.
[Sidenote: Switzerland.]
[Sidenote: Geneva.]
The other European confederation, Switzerland, presented the same
symptoms of internal decay as the Holy Roman Empire, but it was
preserved from the same political degradation by the consciousness
of its nationality and the persistence of its local governments. The
eighteenth century was marked in Switzerland by struggles between
canton and canton, Catholics and Protestants, nobles and bourgeois.
In some cantons, such as Berne, an oligarchical system was maintained
in the hands of a few noble families; in others, such as Uri, a
purely democratic form of government was preserved, which allowed
every peasant a voice in the local administration. Where feudalism
had been established, the peasants were in no better condition than
in the rest of Europe, but in the mountain cantons such a _régime_
was impossible, and individual and political freedom still existed.
It must be remembered that the Switzerland of the eighteenth century
was not identical with that of the nineteenth. The Grisons formed no
part of the confederation, Neufchâtel belonged to Prussia, and Geneva
was an independent republic. The part the latter had played in the
intellectual movement of the century was most conspicuous. Rousseau
was born in Geneva, and Voltaire retired and spent his last years in
its neighbourhood. But Geneva had just before 1789 been the scene of a
revolution resembling that in Holland. A struggle broke out between the
bourgeois families, which monopolised the magistracy, and the mass of
the people, which had ended in the victory of the former. The Genevese
democrats were expelled, and many of them, notably Clavière, exercised
a considerable influence on the course of the Revolution in France.
The state of Europe in 1789 showed everywhere a sense of awakening
to new ideas. The bonds of feudalism were ready to break asunder;
the benevolent despots had recognised the rights of individual and
commercial freedom; the French Revolution was able to sow in ripe
ground the two new principles of the sovereignty of the people and the
sentiment of nationality.