the somewhat naïve suggestion of Thiers that France should
once more intervene as in 1823, a suggestion that was firmly
Nicholas I. and
Great Britain.
rejected. Palmerston’s counter-proposal of an English
expedition met with as little favour in Paris. The
Anglo-French entente was proving but a “cardboard
alliance,” as Wellington called it; and the emperor
Nicholas, to whom the existence of Louis Philippe as king of the
French was at once a sacrilege and a menace, began with a good
hope to work for its destruction. The fears roused by the Reform
Act of 1832 had been belied by its results; the conservative
temper of the British electorate had restored to Great Britain
the prestige of a legitimate power; and the pledge of the tsar’s
renewed confidence and goodwill was the visit of the cesarevich
(afterwards the emperor Alexander II.) to the English court in
Breach of Anglo-French “entente” 1840.
1839. This was not without its effect on the public
sentiment; but the triumph of the tsar’s diplomacy
was due to fresh complications in the Eastern question,
due to the renewed effort of Sultan Mahmud to crush
the hated viceroy of Egypt. These events will be found
outlined in the article Mehemet Ali. Here it will suffice to say
that the convention of London of the 15th of July 1840, signed
by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia without calling
France into counsel, marked the definite breach of the Anglo-French
entente, a breach which was but imperfectly healed by
the Straits’ Convention signed by all the powers on the 13th of
July 1841.
The Straits’ Convention was hailed by Count Nesselrode, the
Russian foreign secretary, as having re-established “the federative
system of the European states on its old basis.”
This was true, in so far as it created yet another
precedent for the concerted action of the European
Great Britain
and France.
powers, and once more consecrated the right of
“Europe” to decide in common on questions of first-rate international
importance. But the divergence of interests and
principles within the concert were too great to be healed by the
settlement of a single issue, however important, and this divergence
increased as events moved towards the revolutionary
outbreaks of 1848. When, in 1846, the independent republic
of Cracow was suppressed by agreement of the three autocratic
powers, on the ground that it had become a dangerous centre of
revolutionary agitation, it was Great Britain and France that
protested against an arbitrary infraction of the treaties by the
very governments which had laid the greatest stress upon their
sanctity. The entente between the two Liberal powers had been
patched up after the closure of the Egyptian Question; it was
cemented by visits of Queen Victoria and the prince consort to
the Château d’Eu (1843 and 1845), and of King Louis Philippe
to Windsor (1844); and it survived, in spite of several causes of
friction, notably the crisis in Morocco (q.v.), until 1846, when the
affair of the Spanish Marriages brought it to a somewhat dramatic
conclusion.
The attempt to secure the succession to the Spanish throne for his descendants by pressing on the marriage of the duke of Montpensier with the infanta Luisa, before that of the young queen Isabella had been proved to be fruitful in children, was on the part of Louis Philippe more The “Spanish Marriages.” than a breach of faith with Great Britain (how deeply it was resented may be learnt from Queen Victoria’s letters); it was a breach of faith with the revolution that had made him king. Since 1840, indeed, the whole tendency of the king’s policy had been to revert to the traditional standpoint of the Bourbons; internally, “resistance” to the growing claims of the democracy; externally, dynastic ambition. But in endeavouring to win the goodwill of the reactionary powers he only succeeded in losing that of the classes of his own people on which The “February Revolution,” 1848. his authority was based. In 1847 he joined with the three autocratic powers in supporting the clerical and reactionary Sonderbund in Switzerland, in defiance of the protests of Great Britain and the attitude of the majority of Frenchmen. When, in February 1848, the revolution broke out in Paris, the bourgeois monarchy, utterly discredited, fell without a struggle (see France and Louis Philippe).
The revolution in Paris was not the cause of the political upheaval which in the year 1848 convulsed Europe from Ireland to the banks of the Danube; it had indeed been preceded by the triumph of Liberalism in Switzerland, by successful revolutions in Naples and Palermo, and Revolution of 1848 outside France. by the grant of a constitution in Piedmont; but flaming up as it were in the revolutionary centre of Europe, it acted as the beacon signal for the simultaneous outbreak of movements which, though long prepared, might but for this have been detached and spasmodic. It was this simultaneity which gave to the revolutions of 1848 their European character and their formidable force. They were the outcome of various, dissimilar and sometimes contradictory impulses—political, social, racial. In France the issue resolved itself into a struggle between the new working-class ideal of Socialism and the bourgeois ideal of the great Revolution; in England the Chartist movement presented, in a less degree, the same character; in Germany, in the Austrian empire, in Italy, on the other hand, the dominant motives were constitutional and nationalist, and of these two the latter became in the end the determining factor. The events of the different revolutions are described elsewhere (see France; Austria; Germany; Hungary; Italy). From the point of view of Europe such unity as they possessed was due to their being, so far as Central Europe was concerned, directed against the system of “stability” associated with the name Metternich. In hatred of this system German, Czech, Magyar, and Italian were united; Kossuth’s great speech of the 3rd of March echoed far beyond the frontiers of Hungary; the fall of Metternich (March 13) was a victory, not only for the populace of Vienna, but for all the peoples and races which had worn the Austrian fetters. It was the signal for revolutions in Hungary (the passing of the “March Laws”), in Bohemia, in Prussia (March 15), in Milan; on the 23rd of March, Charles Albert of Sardinia, placing himself at the head of the Italian national movement, declared war against Austria. Against a movement so widespread and apparently inspired by a common purpose the governments were powerless. The collapse of the Austrian administration, of which the inherent rottenness was now revealed, involved that of those reactionary powers which had leaned upon it. One by one they accepted what seemed to be the inevitable; even Pope Pius IX. sent troops to fight under the banner of St Peter for the Italian cause; while in Berlin Frederick William IV., wrapped in the gold and black colours of imperial Germany, posed as the leader of “the glorious German revolution.” When, on the 18th of May, the parliament of United Germany was opened at Frankfort, it seemed as though pan-German dreams were on the threshold of realization; while in Italy, early in the same month, Lombardy, Modena, Parma and Piacenza declared by plebiscites for incorporation in the north Italian kingdom, Venice following suit on the 4th of June. A profound modification of the European states system seemed inevitable.
That, in the event, the revolutions of 1848 left the territorial settlement of Vienna intact, was due in the main to the marvellous resisting power of the Habsburg monarchy, the strength of which lay in the traditional loyalty of the army and the traditional policy of balancing race Causes of the failure of the revolutionary movements. against race within the empire. The triumph of democracy in Germany was made possible only by the temporary collapse of the Habsburg power, a collapse due to the universality and apparent unanimity of the onslaught upon it. But it was soon clear that the unanimity was more apparent than real. The victory of the democratic forces had been too easy, too seemingly overwhelming; the establishment of the constitutional principle in the main centres of autocracy seemed to make common action against the powers of reaction of secondary importance, and free play was allowed to the racial and national antagonisms that had been present from the first. The battle of German, as well as of Italian, liberty was being fought out on the plains of Lombardy; yet the German democrats, whether in Vienna or Frankfort, hailed the victories of the veteran Radetzky as triumphs of Germanism. In Bohemia the
