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THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1848-9.

Giuseppe Mazzini.

THE
REVOLUTIONARY MOVEMENT
OF 1848-9
IN ITALY, AUSTRIA-HUNGARY, AND GERMANY.

WITH SOME EXAMINATION OF THE PREVIOUS
THIRTY-THREE YEARS.

BY
C. EDMUND MAURICE,
AUTHOR OF "THE LIVES OF ENGLISH POPULAR LEADERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES."

WITH AN ENGRAVED FRONTISPIECE AND OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS.

New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

London: GEORGE BELL AND SONS

1887.

[The right of translation is reserved.]

CHISWICK PRESS:—C. WHITTINGHAM AND CO., TOOKS COURT,
CHANCERY LANE.

PREFACE.

The following book is the result of many years' work. It aims at showing the links which connected together the various movements in Germany, Italy, and the Austrian Empire in 1848-9. Many as are the books which have been written on the various parts of that struggle, I do not know of any attempt to link them together. How adventurous this effort is I am most painfully aware, and none the less so because I happen to know that the task was undertaken and abandoned by at least one writer who has many qualifications for it to which I can lay no claim. I allude to my friend Dr. Eugene Oswald, who has most generously assisted me in carrying out the work for which he was unable to spare the time. But I may say without arrogance that however deficient my history may be in the learning and ability which Dr. Oswald's would have shown, as well as in that lifelikeness which his personal share in the important rising in Baden would have enabled him to give to the descriptions; yet I shall at least have no temptation to any one-sided estimate of the merits of the various races concerned in the struggle, a temptation from which the most candid German could hardly escape. My only danger in that matter would be that I might be tempted to speak too favourably of all the movements of those various races; seeing that during my investigations in the cities affected by these movements, I received the most extreme courtesy and kindness from German and Bohemian, Magyar and Szekler, Saxon and Roumanian, Serb, Croat, and Italian; and I feel nothing but pain at any word of criticism I have uttered in these pages that may jar on the susceptibilities of any of those races.

It will be noticed, of course, that I have omitted from this history any account of the French Revolution. My reasons for this have been given at the beginning of the seventh chapter. But I may add to what I have said there that I had long felt the disproportionate importance which many people attached to the French Revolution of 1848, in regard to its immediate influence on Europe. From Palermo, not from Paris, came the first revolutionary outburst. From Presburg, not from Paris, came the word that shook Metternich from power, and secured a European character to the Revolution. Under these circumstances, I conceived the idea of telling the story of the European Revolution, without touching on the French part of it, except in the most incidental manner; so that the students of this period may be able fairly to estimate the other influences which produced these great results, unblinded by the splendour which anything done in Paris seems always to have for the student of revolution.

One other peculiarity in my book also needs some explanation. I have, as far as possible, avoided references to authorities in notes. Such references only worry the general reader, while the student will, I think, be more helped by the list of authorities which I append to this preface.

It now only remains for me to thank those friends who have helped me in my work.—For the German part of the Revolution, I have received much help from the kind loan of the "Neue Rheinische Zeitung" by the late Dr. Karl Marx. For the special Baden part of it I received help not only from Dr. Oswald but also from Dr. Karl Blind, who lent me pamphlets not otherwise accessible. For the Bohemian part of the narrative I owe much to the kind help of Dr. Gabler, Mr. Naprstek, Count Leo Thun the younger, and Dr. Rieger. For hints about the Viennese struggle I owe thanks to Dr. von Frankl, the well-known poet of the revolution, and also to Dr. Friedjung. For some general hints on the Slavonic question I am much indebted to Baron Helfert; and my obligation to Dr. Herbst I have acknowledged in a note. For general Hungarian information I owe thanks to Mr. Pulszky, to Miss Toulmin Smith, to General Klapka, to my kind friend Professor Felmeri of Klausenburg, to Dr. Lindner, Mr. Kovacs, Mr. Kovary, Mr. Boros, of the same town, and to Mr. Szabò, now Librarian of Klausenburg University, formerly a distinguished officer in General Bem's army; also to Mr. Fekete, Mr. Sandor, and Professor Koncz of Maros Vasarhely; and last but not least to Mr. Paget, the author of "Hungary and Transylvania." For special hints about the Saxon question I am indebted, amongst others, to Dr. Teutsch, to Professor Senz, and to the late "Obergespan" of Hermannstadt, Herr von Brennerberg, whose loss to the district I can well understand, since the acquaintance of a week enabled me to appreciate the singular justice of his mind, as well as his uniform kindness; while for information from the Roumanian point of view I owe thanks to Mr. Barritzu. For information on Serb questions I am indebted principally to Mr. Polit, and Mr. Hadjiç of Neusatz, and Mr. Boscoviç of Belgrade, for whose acquaintance I have to thank the late Servian Minister in England, Mr. Mijatoviç. The same introducer I have to thank for the kindness shown me by Mr. Matkovicu of Agram. In the last mentioned town I also received useful information and help from Mr. Subek, and from the Librarian of the South Slavonic Academy.

For help in Italian work I have to thank my old friend Madame Venturi, Signor Ernesto Nathan, Signor Cardinali, Signor Berti, Professor Villari, Signor Guastalla, Professor Aurelio Saffi (the Ex-Triumvir of Rome), Signor Galli, Dr. Sacchi, the Syndic of Goito, the Librarian of the RBiblioteca di Brera at Milan, and my friend Signor Pizzi.—For help of various kinds I have to thank Miss Wedgwood, Miss Irby, Dr. Brandl and Mr. Garnett of the British Museum.

I have also to acknowledge the kindness of Mr. Diösy in allowing a copy to be taken of his picture of Kossuth, for insertion in my book. This favour, with other help, I owe to my friend Mr. B. Gunszt.

CONTENTS.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

AUTHORITIES CONSULTED.

General History.
Metternich's Memoirs.
Menzel's Geschichte der letzten vierzig Jahre.
GERMANY.
General German History.
Arndt, Life of.
Blum, Life of.
Görres, Life of.
Marx, Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
Perthes, Life of.
Stein, Life of, by Professor Seeley.
Stenographischer Bericht des deutschen Vor Parlaments zu Frankfort.
---- des Fünfziger Ausschüsses.
---- der deutschen Constituirenden Versammlung.
Zimmermann Deutsche Revolution.
PRUSSIA.
Humboldt Brief-Wechsel mit einem Jungen Freunde.
---- Letters to Varnhagen von Ense.
Schmalz Berichtigung einer Stelle in der Bredow-Venturinischen Chronik für das Jahr 1808.
BADEN.
Goegg (Amand) Rückblick auf die Badische Revolution (from La Ligue des Peuples).
La Liberté de Penser (a journal containing pamphlets, &c., on the Baden Revolution).
Morel Der März-Aufstand und Die Badische Revolution.
Struve (Gustav) Geschichte der Volks Erhebungen in Baden.
" (Amalie) Erinnerungen, &c.
SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN.
Adressen an eine hohe deutsche Versammlung, &c., von Kiel.
Bunsen. Memoir on Constitutional Rights of the Duchies.
Droysen. The Policy of Denmark towards the Duchies.
SWITZERLAND.
Der Untergang des Sonderbundes.
AUSTRIA.
General History.
Helfert. Geschichte Oesterreichs.
Springer. Geschichte Oesterreichs seit der Wiener Frieden, 1809.
Pillersdorf. Rückblick auf die politische Bewegung in Oesterreich.
VIENNA.
Dunder. Denkschrift über die Wiener October Revolution.
Grüner. Geschichte der October Revolution.
Reschauer. Das Jahr 1848.
Reichstag's Gallerie, &c.
Verhandlungen des Oesterreichischen Landtages 1848.
Violand. Die Sociale Geschichte der Revolution in Oesterreich.
Wiener Boten.
BOHEMIA.
Müller. Die merkwürdigsten Tage Prags in der Pfingst-Woche des Jahres 1848.
Pameti (Pamphlets and proclamations, &c., in the Archives of Prague).
Schöpf. Volks Bewegung in Prag.
Ständische Verhältnisse des Konigreichs Böhmen.
Stiles. Austria in 1848-9.
Tomain. Das Böhmische Staatsrecht.
GALICIA.
Ausschlüsse über die jungsten Ereignisse in Polen.
Krasinski. Panslavismus und Germanismus.
Krolikowski. Mémoire sur l'Etat de Cracovie, 1840.
Zaleski. Die Pölnische Frage.
HUNGARY.
General History.
Beschwerden and Klagen der Slaven in Ungarn, 1843.
Böhmisch-Slavische Helden in der Panslavismus.
Deak, Life of.
Görgei. My Life and Acts in Hungary.
Irby (Miss). Across the Carpathians.
Klapka. Memoirs of the War of Independence in Hungary.
Kossuth, Memoir of in a History of Hungary by E. O. S.
Kovari (Laslò) Okmanytar az 1848-9. (This book, though written in Hungarian, contains some important documents in German, of which alone I have been able to make use.)
Mailath (Count Johann) Geschichte von Oesterreich.
" Der Ungarische Reichstag in 1830.
Paget. Hungary and Transylvania.
Pulszky. Meine Zeit mein Leben.
" (Madame). Memoirs of a Hungarian Lady.
Smith (Toulmin). Parallels between Constitution and Constitutional History of England and Hungary.
Szechenyi (Vortrag über) Ludwig Fezstory.
Zur Geschichte des Ungarischen Freiheits-Kampfes Autentische Berichte.
CROATIA AND SLAVONIA.
Aktenstücke zur Geschichte des Croatisch Slavonischen Landtages, by Pejakoviç.
Agramer Zeitung, 1843-8.
Deutsche Viertels-Jahr-Schrift (article called Mittheilungen aus Serbien).
Le Duc. La Croatie et la Confedération Italienne.
Serbes de Hongrie, &c.
Verhandlungen des Agramer Landtags in October, 1845.
Other pamphlets on the Croatian question.
TRANSYLVANIA.
Bem. Feldzug in Siebenbürgen, by Czetz.
Bonar. Transylvania, its Products and People.
Deutsche Worte, a magazine.
Friedenfels, Joseph Bedeus von Scharberg.
Klausenburg, Collection of documents in Library of.
Lauriani. Die Romänen der Oesterreichischer Monarchie.
Maros Vasarhely, Collection of Baron Apor at.
Roth. Der Sprach-Kampf in Siebenbürgen.
Scharberg. Die Verfassung Siebenbürgens.
Unterhaltungen aus der Gegenwart.
Vereinigung Siebenbürgens mit Ungarn vom Standpunkte der Sachsischen Nation beleuchtet.
Zieglauer. Die Reform-Bewegung in Siebenbürgen.
ITALY
General History.
Alfieri. Opere. Autobiography.
Bianchi (Nicomede), Storia della politica Austriaca rispetto ai Sovrani ed ai Governi Italiani dell'anno 1791, al Maggio del 1857.
Coppi. Annali d'Italia.
D'Amato. Panteon dei Martiri della libertà Italiana.
Farini. Lo Stato Romano (really including much of other parts).
Foscolo (Ugo) Scritte politici inediti. Jacopo Ortis.
---- Lettera a Conte Verri.
---- Lettera a Conte di Ficquelmont.
---- (Vita di). Pecchio.
Gallenga. Italy in 1848.
Gioberti Vincenzo (biography by V. G. in I Contemporanei Italiani). Del Primato Morale e Civile degli Italiani.
Gualterio. Gli Ultimi Rivolgimenti Italiani.
---- Delle Negative date dal Conte Solaro della Margherita.
La Concordia (paper published at Genoa).
La Farina. Storia dell Italia dopo il Settembre del 1847.
Manzoni (Alessandro). Cenni Sulla vita Sua.
Miscellanee politiche Genovesi (pamphlets, songs, &c., published at Genoa, and bearing on the revolution).
Mazzini, Life and Writings of (translated by E. A. V.).
Panizzi, Lettere ad, di uomini illustri, &c.
Ranalli. Istorie Italiane dal 1846 al 1853.
LOMBARDY AND VENETIA.
Andryane. Mémoires d'un prisonnier d'Etat.
Anfossi (Francesco). Memorie sulla campagna di Lombardia del 1848.
Biblioteca di Brera (Milan), Collections of Caricatures, Pamphlets, and Proclamations in.
Cantù (Cesare). Editions and Lives of Monti and Parini.
Casati. Nuove rivelazioni su i fatti di Milano nel 1847-8.
Cattaneo. Dell'Insurrezione di Milano.
" Archivio Triennale.
Dandolo. Italian Volunteers and Lombard Rifle Brigade.
Gazzetta di Milano, 1848.
Manin, Documents et pièces autentiques laissées par.
Quadro politico di Milano (collection of pamphlets, &c.).
Vedovi (Timoleone). I martiri di san Georgio e di Belfiore.
NAPLES AND SICILY.
Colletta. History of Naples (translated).
Ruggiero Settimo. Per Gabriele Colonna.
PIEDMONT.
Balbo (Cesare) autobiography.
" Speranze d'ltalia.
Brofferio. Storia di Piemonte.
" I miei Tempi.
Solaro della Margherita, Vita di per Biginelli.
" Memorandum Storico-Politico.
" Avvedimenti Politici.
ROMAN STATES.
Artaud. Vie de Pie 7.
" Vie de Pie 8.
Balleydier. Storia della Revoluzione di Roma.
Beghelli. La Republica Romana del 1849.
Brasini. L'8 Agosto 1848, Bologna.
" La Resistenza di Bologna nelle otto Giornate di Maggio, 1849.
D'Azeglio (Massimo) Degli ultimi casi di Romagna.
" Correspondance Politique.
Monitorio Romano, 1848 and 1849.
Orsini. Memoirs.
Pasolini (Memoir of), by his son, translated.
Protocollo della Republica Romana.
Republica Italiana del 1849 (anonymous clerical).
Rossi (Pellegrino). Vita di per Raggi (including other notices of him).
Torre (Federico). Memorie Storiche sull'intervento Francese (unfinished).
TUSCANY.
Guerrazzi (Domenico) Apologia della Vita Politica. (His novels should also be read to estimate his influence.)

CHIEF RACES OF AUSTRIAN EMPIRE.

Hungary.

Magyars, ruling race; found in most parts of the Kingdom, but most largely in the Northern parts. Semi-Turkish race (non-Aryan). Various creeds; Calvinism the most distinctive (i.e., the one that has most connected itself with the race-struggles). Chief town, Buda-Pesth.

Croats, chiefly found in Croatia, but sometimes in Slavonia and Dalmatia. Creed, Roman Catholic; Slavonic race; chief town, Agram.

Saxons, found in S.E. of Transylvania. Creed, mainly Lutheran; race, German; chief town, Hermannstadt.

Serbs, found chiefly in Slavonia, but also in Banat, Bacska, and in smaller numbers in other parts of Hungary. Creed, Greek Church; race, Slavonic; chief towns, Neusatz and Carlowitz.

Slovaks, found in North Hungary. Creed, Lutheran; race, Slavonic.

Szekler, found in N.E. of Transylvania. Creeds, various; race, same as Magyars; chief town, Maros Vasarhely.

Roumanian, or Wallack, in all parts of Transylvania, and a few in the Banat. Creed, Greek Church; race, mixed Dacian and Italian; chief town, Blasendorf.

Italians, found in Dalmatia and Istria.

Western Austria.

Germans, found everywhere, but chiefly in Archduchy. Creed, mainly Roman Catholic; chief town, Vienna.

Slovenes, found in Krain, Carinthia, and Styria. Race, Slavonic.

Czechs, in Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia. Creed, chiefly Roman Catholic; race, Slavonic; chief town, Prague.

Galicia.

Poles, found in all parts. Creed, Roman Catholic; race, Slavonic; chief town, Lemberg.

Ruthenians. Creed, Greek Church; race, Slavonic.

TABLE OF DATES.

CHAPTER I.
THE TRIUMPH OF DESPOTISM. 1815-1819.

Condition of Europe in 1815.—Metternich's position.—Character of Alexander of Russia.—Metternich's attitude towards religion.—Madame de Krüdener.—The Holy Alliance.—Aspirations of the Germans.—Stein v. Metternich.—Schmalz's pamphlet.—The Rhine Province.—Arndt and Görres.—The Small States of Germany.—Würtemberg.—Weimar.—The Jena demonstration.—The Burschenschaft.—The Wartburg demonstration.—The Murder of Kotzebue.—The Carlsbad decrees.—The Final Act of Vienna.—Metternich's triumph.

In the year 1814 Napoleon Buonaparte ceased to reign over Europe, and, after a very short interregnum, Clement Metternich reigned in his stead. Ever since the fall of Stadion, and the collapse of Austria in 1809, this statesman had exercised the chief influence in Austrian affairs; and, by his skilful diplomacy, the Emperor had been enabled to play a part in Europe which, though neither honourable nor dignified, was eminently calculated to enable that Prince to take a leading position in politics, when the other Powers were exhausted by war, and uncertain of what was to follow. But Francis of Austria, though in agreement with Metternich, was really his hand rather than his head; and thus the crafty Minister easily assumed the real headship of Europe, while professing to be the humble servant of the Emperor of Austria.

The system of the new ruler resembled that of Napoleon in its contempt for the rights of men and of nations; but it was to be varnished over with an appearance of legality, a seeming respect for the rights of kings, and a determination to preserve peace and avoid dramatic sensations, which made it welcome to Europe, after eighteen years of almost incessant wars or rumours of wars. As he looked round upon the countries that had fallen under his rule, the contemplation of the existing state of Europe seemed to promise the new monarch a fairly successful reign. France had been satisfied by the preservation of Alsace and Lorraine, and by the sense that, from having been the focus of revolution, she had now become the corner-stone of legitimacy. England had at first seemed to give pledges to the cause of liberty by her promise of independence to Genoa, and her guarantee of the Sicilian Constitution; but with the help of Castlereagh, whom Metternich described as "that upright and enlightened statesman," the Austrian Government had succeeded in persuading the English to consent to look on quietly while Genoa was absorbed in the Kingdom of Sardinia, and while the Anglo-Sicilian Constitution was destroyed by Ferdinand of Naples; and the English zeal for independence had been happily diverted from the support of constitutions and civic liberties to the championship of the most contemptible of Napoleon's puppets, the King of Saxony.

The King of Prussia, who in 1813 had seemed in danger of becoming the champion of popular rights and German freedom, was now, with his usual feebleness, swaying towards the side of despotism; and any irritation which he may have felt at the opposition to his claim upon Saxony, had been removed by the concession of the Rhine Province.

Among the smaller sovereigns of Europe, the King of Sardinia and the Pope alone showed any signs of rebellion against the new ruler of Europe. The former had objected to the continued occupation of Alessandria by Austrian forces; while the representatives of the Pope had even entered a protest against that vague and dangerous clause in the Treaty of Vienna which gave Austria a right to occupy Ferrara.

But, on the other hand, the King of Sardinia had shown more zeal than any other ruler of Italy in restoring the old feudal and absolutist régime which the French had overthrown. And though Cardinal Consalvi, the chief adviser of the Pope, was following for the present a semi-Liberal policy, he might as yet be considered as only having established a workable Government in Rome. And a Pope who had been kidnapped by Napoleon was hardly likely to offer much opposition to the man who, in his own opinion, was the overthrower of Napoleon.

Yet there were two difficulties which seemed likely to hinder the prosperity of Metternich's reign. These were the character of Alexander I. of Russia, and the aspirations of the German nation.

Alexander, indeed, if occasionally irritating Metternich, evidently afforded him considerable amusement, and the sort of pleasure which every man finds in a suitable subject for the exercise of his peculiar talents. For Alexander was eminently a man to be managed. Enthusiastic, dreamy, and vain; now bent on schemes of conquest, now on the development of some ideal of liberty, now filled with some confused religious mysticism; at one time eager to divide the world with Napoleon, then anxious to restore Poland to its independence; now listening to the appeals of Metternich to his fears, at another time to the nobler and more liberal suggestions of Stein and Pozzo di Borgo;[1] only consistent in the one desire to play an impressive and melodramatic part in European affairs.

But, amusing as Alexander was to Metternich, there were circumstances connected with the condition of Europe which might make his weak love of display as dangerous to Metternich's policy as a more determined opponent could be. There were still scattered over Europe traces of the old aspirations after liberty which had been first kindled by the French Revolution, and again awakened by the rising against Napoleon. Setting aside, for the moment, the leaders of German thought, there were men who had hoped that even Napoleon might give liberty to Poland; there were Spanish popular leaders who had risen for the independence of their country; Lombards who had sat in the Assembly of the Cis-Alpine Republic; Carbonari in Naples, who had fought under Murat, and who had at one time received some little encouragement, even from their present King. If the Czar of Russia should put himself at the head of such a combination as this, the consequences to Europe might indeed be serious.

But the stars in their courses fought for Metternich; and a force, which he had considered almost as dangerous as the character of Alexander, proved the means of securing the Czar to the side of despotism.

Nothing is more characteristic of Metternich and his system than his attitude towards any kind of religious feeling. It might have been supposed that the anti-religious spirit which had shown itself in the fiercest period of the French Revolution, and, to a large extent, also in the career of Napoleon, would have induced the restorers of the old system to appeal both to clerical feeling and religious sentiment, as the most hopeful bulwark of legitimate despotism. Metternich was far wiser. He knew, in spite of the accidental circumstances which had connected Atheism with the fiercer forms of Jacobinism, that, from the time of Moses to the time of George Washington, religious feeling had constantly been a tremendous force on the side of liberty; and although he might try to believe that to himself alone was due the fall of Napoleon, yet he could not but be aware that there were many who still fancied that the popular risings in Spain and Germany had contributed to that end, and that in both these cases the element of religious feeling had helped to strengthen the popular enthusiasm. He felt, too, that however much the clergy might at times have been made the tools of despotism, they did represent a spiritual force which might become dangerous to those who relied on the power of armies, the traditions of earthly kings, or the tricks of diplomatists. Much, therefore, as he may have disliked the levelling and liberating part of the policy of Joseph II., Metternich shared the hostility of that Prince to the power of the clergy.

Nor was it purely from calculations of policy that Metternich was disposed to check religious enthusiasm. Like so many of the nobles of his time, he had come under the influence of the French philosophers of the eighteenth century; his hard and cynical spirit had easily caught the impress of their teaching; and he found it no difficult matter to flavour Voltairianism with a slight tincture of respectable orthodox Toryism.

The method by which he achieved this end should be given in his own words: "I read every day one or two chapters of the Bible. I discover new beauties daily, and prostrate myself before this admirable book; while at the age of twenty I found it difficult not to think the family of Lot unworthy to be saved, Noah unworthy to have lived, Saul a great criminal, and David a terrible man. At twenty I tried to understand the Apocalypse; now I am sure that I never shall understand it. At the age of twenty a deep and long-continued search in the Holy Books made me an Atheist after the fashion of Alembert and Lalande; or a Christian after that of Chateaubriand. Now I believe and do not criticize. Accustomed to occupy myself with great moral questions, what have I not accomplished or allowed to be wrought out, before arriving at the point where the Pope and my Curé begged me to accept from them the most portable edition of the Bible? Is it bold in me to take for certain that among a thousand individuals chosen from the men of which the people are composed, there will be found, owing to their intellectual faculties, their education, or their age, very few who have arrived at the point where I find myself?"

This statement of his attitude of mind is taken from a letter written to remonstrate with the Russian Ambassador on the patronage afforded by the Emperor Alexander to the Bible Societies. But how much more would such an attitude of mind lead him to look with repugnance on the religious excitement which was displaying itself even in the Arch Duchy of Austria!

And, to say the truth, men of far deeper religious feeling than Metternich might well be dissatisfied with the influence of the person who was the chief mover in this excitement.

The Baroness de Krüdener, formerly one of the gayest of Parisian ladies of fashion, and at least suspected of not having been too scrupulous in her conduct, had gone through the process which Carlyle so forcibly describes in his sketch of Ignatius Loyola. She had changed the excitements of the world for the excitements of religion, and was now preaching and prophesying a millennium of good things to come in another world, to those who would abandon some of the more commonplace amusements of the present. The disturbance which she was producing in men's minds specially alarmed Metternich; and, under what influence it may be difficult to prove, she was induced to retire to Russia, and there came in contact with the excitable Czar.

Under her influence Alexander drew up a manifesto, from which it appeared that, while all men were brothers, kings were the fathers of their peoples; Russia, Austria, and Prussia were different branches of one Christian people, who recognized no ruler save the Highest; and they were to combine to enforce Christian principles on the peoples of Europe. When the draft of this proclamation was first placed before Metternich it was so alien from his modes of thought that he could only treat it with scorn; and Frederick William of Prussia was the only ruler who regarded it with even modified approval. But with all his scorn Metternich had the wit to see that the pietism of Alexander of Russia had now been turned into a direction which might be made use of for the enforcement of Metternich's own system of government; and thus, after having induced Alexander, much against his will, to modify and alter the original draft, Metternich laid the foundation of the Holy Alliance.

But there still remained the troublesome question of the aspirations of the German nation; and these seemed likely at first to centre in a man of far higher type and far more steady resolution than Alexander. This was Baron von Stein, who, driven from office by Napoleon, had been in exile the point of attraction to all those who laboured for the liberty of Germany. He had declared, at an early period, in favour of a German Parliament. But Metternich had ingeniously succeeded in pitting against him the local feeling of the smaller German States; and instead of the real Parliament which Stein desired, there arose that curious device for hindering national development called the German Bund.

This was composed of thirty-nine members, the representatives of all the different German Governments. Its object was said to be to preserve the outward and inward safety of Germany, and the independence and inviolability of her separate States. If any change were to be made in fundamental laws, it could only be done by a unanimous vote. Some form of Constitution was to be introduced in each State of the Bund; arrangements were to be made with regard to the freedom of the press, and the Bund was also to take into consideration the question of trade and intercourse between the different States. All the members of the Bundestag were to protect Germany, and each individual State, against every attack. The vagueness and looseness of these provisions enabled Metternich so to manage the Bundestag as to defeat the objects of Stein and his friends, and gradually to use this weakly-constituted Assembly as an effective engine of despotism.

But in fact Stein was ill fitted to represent the popular feeling in any efficient manner. His position is one that is not altogether easy to explain. He believed, to some extent, in the People, especially the German People. That is to say, he believed in the power of that people to feel justly and honourably; and, as long as that feeling was expressed in the form of a cry to their rulers to guide and lead justly, he was as anxious as anyone that that cry should be heard. He liked, too, the sense of the compact embodiment of this feeling in some institution representing the unity of the nation. But, with the ideas connected with popular representation in the English sense, he had little sympathy. That the People or their representatives should reason or act, independently of their sovereigns, was a political conception which was utterly abhorrent to him.

In short, Stein's antagonism to Metternich was as intense as that of the most advanced democrat; but it was not so much the opposition of a champion of freedom to a champion of despotism, as the opposition of an honest man to a rogue. Metternich wrote in his Memoirs, when he was taking office for the first time in 1809, "From the day when peace is signed we must confine our system to tacking and turning and flattering. Thus alone may we possibly preserve our existence till the day of general deliverance." This policy had been consistently followed. The abandonment of Andrew Hofer after the Tyrolese rising of 1809, the adulterous marriage of Maria Louisa, the alliance with Napoleon, the discouragement of all popular effort to throw off the French yoke, the timely desertion of Napoleon's cause, just soon enough to give importance to the alliance of Austria with Prussia and Russia and England, just late enough to prevent any danger of defeat and misfortune; these acts marked the character of Metternich's policy and excited the loathing of Stein.

As he had been repelled from Metternich by arts like these, so Stein had been drawn to Arndt, Schleiermacher, and Steffens by a common love of honesty and by a common power of self-sacrifice; but he looked upon them none the less as, to a large extent, dreamers and theorists; and this want of sympathy with them grew, as the popular movement took a more independent form, until at last the champion of Parliamentary Government, the liberator of the Prussian peasant, the leader of the German people in the struggle against Napoleon, drifted entirely out of political life from want of sympathy with all parties.

But it was not to Stein alone that the Germans of 1813 had looked for help and encouragement in their struggle against Napoleon. The People had found other noble leaders at that period, and it remembered them. The King of Prussia remembered them too, to his shame. He was perfectly aware that he had played a very sorry part in the beginning of the struggle, and that, instead of leading his people, he had been forced by them most unwillingly into the position of a champion of liberty. It was not, therefore, merely from a fear of the political effects of the Constitutional movement, but from a more personal feeling, that Frederick William III. was eager to forget the events of 1813.

But if the King wished to put aside uncomfortable facts, his flatterers were disposed to go much further, and to deny them. A man named Schmalz, who had been accused, rightly or wrongly, of having acted in 1808 with Scharnhorst in promoting the Tugendbund,[2] and of writing in a democratic sense about popular assemblies, now wrote a pamphlet to vindicate himself against these charges.

Starting from this personal standpoint, he went on to maintain that all which was useful in the movement of 1813 came directly from the King; that enterprises like that by which Schill endeavoured to rouse the Prussians to a really popular struggle against the French were an entire mistake; that the political unions did nothing to stir up the people; that the alliance between Prussia and France in 1812 had saved Europe; and that it was not till the King gave the word in February, 1813, that the German people had shown any wish to throw off the yoke of Napoleon.

This pamphlet at once called forth a storm of indignation. Niebuhr and Schleiermacher both wrote answers to it, and the remaining popularity of the King received a heavy blow when it was found that he was checking the opposition, and had even singled out Schmalz for special honour. The great centre of discontent was in the newly-acquired Rhine province. The King of Prussia, indeed, had hoped that by founding a University at Bonn, by appointing Arndt Professor of History, and Görres, the former editor of the "Rhenish Mercury," Director of Public Instruction, he might have secured the popular feeling in the province to his side.

But Arndt and Görres were not men to be silenced by favour, any more than by fear. Görres remonstrated with the King for giving a decoration to Schmalz, and organized petitions for enforcing the clause in the Treaty of Vienna which enabled the Bund to summon the Stände of the different provinces. Arndt renewed his demand for the abolition of serfdom in his own province of Rügen, advocated peasant proprietorship, and, above all, Parliamentary Government for Germany.

The feeling of discontent, which these pamphlets helped to keep alive, was further strengthened in the Rhine Province by a growing feeling that Frederick William was trying to crush out local traditions and local independence by the help of Prussian officials.

So bitter was the anti-Prussian feeling produced by this conduct, that a temporary liking was excited for the Emperor of Austria, as an opponent of the Prussianizing of Germany; and Metternich, travelling in 1817 through this province, remarked that it is "no doubt the part of Europe where the Emperor is most loved, more even than in our own country."

But it was but a passing satisfaction that the ruler of Europe could derive from this accidental result of German discontent. He had already begun to perceive that his opposition to the unity of Germany, and his consequent attempt to pose as the champion of the separate States, had not tended to secure the despotic system which his soul loved.

Stein had opposed the admission of the smaller German States to the Vienna Congress, no doubt holding that the unity of Germany would be better accomplished in this manner, and very likely distrusting Bavaria and Würtemberg, as former allies of Napoleon. Metternich, by the help of Talleyrand, had defeated this attempt at exclusion, and had secured the admission of Bavaria and Würtemberg to the Congress. But he now found that these very States were thorns in his side.

They resented the attempts of Metternich to dictate to them in their internal affairs; and, though the King of Bavaria might confine himself to vague phrases about liberty, the King of Würtemberg actually went the length of granting a Constitution. Had this King lived much longer, Metternich might have been able to revive against him the remembrance of his former alliance with Napoleon. But when, after his death in 1816, the new King of Würtemberg, a genuine German patriot, continued, in defiance of his nobles, to uphold his father's Constitution, this hope was taken away, and the South German States remained to the last, with more or less consistency, a hindrance to the completeness of Metternich's system.

But the summary of Metternich's difficulties in Germany is not yet complete. The ruler of another small principality, the Duke of Weimar, had taken advantage, like the King of Würtemberg, of the permission to grant a Constitution to his people; and had been more prominent than even the King of Würtemberg in encouraging freedom of discussion in his dominions. This love of freedom, in Weimar as in most countries of Europe, connected itself with University life, and thus found its centre in the celebrated University of Jena; and on June 18th, 1816, the students of the University met to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. There, to the great alarm of the authorities, they publicly burnt the pamphlet of Schmalz, and another written by the play-writer Kotzebue, who was believed to have turned away Alexander of Russia from the cause of liberty, and now to be acting as his tool and spy.

The head of the Rhine police, conscious, no doubt, of the ferment in his own province, remonstrated with the Duke of Weimar on permitting such disturbances.

This opposition increased the movement which it was designed to check. Jahn, who had founded the gymnastic schools which had speedily become places of military exercise for patriotic Germans during the war, now came forward to organize a Burschenschaft, a society which was to include all the patriotic students of Germany. Metternich and his friends had become thoroughly alarmed at the progress of the opposition, but again events seemed to work for him; and the enthusiasm of the students, ill-regulated, and ill-guided, was soon to give an excuse for the blow which would secure the victory for a time to the champions of absolutism.

The desire for liberty seems always to connect itself with love of symbolism; and the movement for reform, naturally led to the revival of sympathy with earlier reformers. Actuated by these feelings, the students of Leipzig and other German Universities gathered at the Wartburg, in 1817, to revive the memory of Luther's testimony for liberty of thought; and they seized the opportunity for protesting against the tyranny of their own time.

Apparently the enthusiasm for the Emperor of Austria had not extended to Saxony; for an Austrian corporal's staff was one of the first objects cast into the bonfire, which was lighted by the students; while the dislike to Prussia was symbolized by the burning of a pair of Prussian military stays, and the hatred of the tyranny which prevailed in the smaller States, found vent in the burning of a Hessian pig-tail. The demonstration excited much disapproval among the stricter followers of Metternich; but Stein and others protested against any attempt to hinder the students in their meeting.

In the following year the Burschenschaft, which Jahn desired to form, began to take shape, and to increase the alarm of the lovers of peace at all costs. Metternich rose to the occasion; and boasted that he had become a moral power in Europe, which would leave a void when it disappeared. In March, 1819, the event took place which at last gave this "moral power" a success that seemed for the moment likely to be lasting.

Ludwig Sand, a young man who had studied first at Erlangen and afterwards at Jena, went, on March 23rd, 1819, to the house of Kotzebue at Mannheim, and stabbed him to the heart.

It was said, truly or falsely, that a paper was found with Sand, declaring that he acted with the authority of the University of ——. It was said also that Sand had played a prominent part in the Wartburg celebration. With the logic usual with panic-mongers, Metternich was easily able to deduce from these facts the conclusion that the Universities must, if left to themselves, become schools of sedition and murder.

The Duke of Weimar, with more courage, perhaps, than tact, had anticipated the designs of Metternich by a proclamation in favour of freedom of thought and teaching at the Universities, as the best security for attaining truth.

This proclamation strengthened still further the hands of Metternich. Abandoning the position which he had assumed at the Congress of Vienna, of champion of the smaller States of Germany, he appealed to the King of Prussia for help to coerce the Duke of Weimar, and the German Universities.

Frederick William, in spite of his support of Schmalz, was still troubled by some scruples of conscience. In May, 1815, he had made a public promise of a Constitution to Prussia; Stein and Humboldt were eager that he should fulfil this promise, and even the less scrupulous Hardenberg held that it ought to be fulfilled sooner or later.

But Metternich urged upon the King that he had allowed dangerous principles to grow in Prussia; that his kingdom was the centre of conspiracy against the peace and order of Germany, and that, if he once conceded representative government, the other Powers would be obliged to leave him to his fate.

The King, already alarmed by the course which events were taking, was easily persuaded by Metternich to abandon a proposal which seemed to have nothing in its favour except the duty of keeping his word. Arndt was deprived of his professorship, and tried by commission on the charge of taking part in a Republican conspiracy; Jahn was arrested, and Görres fled from the country, to reappear at a later time in Bavaria as a champion of Ultramontanism against the hateful influence of Prussia.

Then Metternich proceeded to his master stroke. He called a conference at Carlsbad to crush the revolutionary spirit of the Universities. A commission of five members was appointed, under whose superintendence an official was to be placed over every University, to direct the minds and studies of students to sound political conclusions. Each Government of Germany was to pledge itself to remove any teacher pronounced dangerous by this commission; and if any Government resisted, the commission would compel it. No Government was ever to accept a teacher so expelled from any other University. No newspaper of less than twenty pages was to appear without leave of a Board, appointed for the purpose, and every state of Germany was to be answerable to the Bund for the contents of its newspapers. The editor of a suppressed paper was to be, ipso facto, prohibited from starting another paper for five years in any state of the Bund; and a central Board was to be founded for inquiry into demagogic plots.

These decrees seem a sufficiently crushing engine of despotism; but there still remained a slight obstacle to be removed from Metternich's path. The 13th Article of the Treaty of Vienna had suggested the granting of Constitutions by different rulers of Germany; and, vaguely as it had been drawn, both Metternich and Francis felt this clause an obstacle in their path.

As soon, therefore, as the Carlsbad Decrees had been passed, Metternich summoned anew the different States of Germany, to discuss the improvement of this clause. The representatives of Bavaria and Würtemberg protested against this interference with the independence of the separate States; and, although the representative of Prussia steadily supported Metternich, it was necessary to make some concession in form to the opponents of his policy.

It was, therefore, decided that the Princes of Germany should not be hindered in the exercise of their power, nor in their duty as members of the Bund, by any Constitutions. By this easy device Metternich was able to assume, without resistance, the Imperial tone, which suited his position. The entry in his memoirs naturally marks this supreme moment of triumph. "I told my five-and-twenty friends," he says, "what we want, and what we do not want; on this avowal there was a general declaration of approval, and each one asserted he had never wanted more or less, nor indeed anything different."

Thus was Metternich recognized as the undisputed ruler of Germany, and, for the moment, of Europe.

CHAPTER II.
FIRST EFFORTS OF CONSTITUTIONALISM, 1820-1832.

Effect of Napoleonic Wars on Italian Feeling.—Austrian promises and performances in Lombardy.—Vincenzo Monti.—Ugo Foscolo.—Alessandro Manzoni.—Federigo Confalonieri.—Position of Sardinia.—Relations of Sardinia with Austria.—Reaction under Victor Emmanuel.—Ferdinand I. of Naples.—The Carbonari.—The Spanish rising.—The Spanish Constitution.—The Neapolitan rising.—Guglielmo Pepe.—The Conference at Troppau.—Palermo and the Constitution of 1812.—Divisions in the Liberal Camp.—Ferdinand's attitude.—The movement in Piedmont.—Santa Rosa.—Charles Albert.—"Voleva e non voleva."—The Students' rising.—The rising in Piedmont, and causes of its failure.—Reaction in Italy.—The first martyr.—The Greek rising.—Alexander of Russia.—George Canning.—Breaking of the Holy Alliance.—The Movements of 1830-31.—The Frankfort Decrees.—Metternich's second triumph.

Of all the countries of Europe, none had been more affected than Italy, both for good and evil, by the Napoleonic wars; and in no part of Italy were the traces of these wars so evident as in Lombardy. Though settled liberty had been unknown there since the cities of the Lombard League had fallen under their petty tyrants; though any sense, even of national independence, must have ceased since the sixteenth century; yet the real misery of the position of a conquered country, the sense of an absolutely alien rule, seems hardly to have been fully realised by the Lombards, until the Peace of Utrecht, in 1713, had substituted the Austrian rule for that of the Spaniards. The Spanish tyranny, however cruel, had been softened to the Italians by the sense of community of race and similarity of language; and the readiness of the conquerors to inter-marry with the conquered had given hopes of an ultimate amalgamation between the races. But under the German rule there were no such modifications of the evils of conquest. The new rulers held aloof from the Italians; and the latter were reminded at every moment that they were not merely slaves, but slaves to an alien and unsympathetic master.

When, then, an Italian, at the head of a French army, offered the Lombards deliverance from German rule; when he organized them into a separate legion, and showed special trust in them throughout his wars; when he established the Government of the Cis-Alpine Republic, and held out before their astonished eyes the vision of an united Italy, it was natural that such appeals should awaken hopes of a newer life, and a prouder position in the councils of Europe.

It was true that their confidence had received terrible shocks. The horrible treachery of the Treaty of Campo Formio, the manipulation of the Constitution of the Cis-Alpine Republic, the gradual changes which tended to absorb it into the French Empire; these had been tolerably clear signs to the Lombards of what they might ultimately expect from their so-called liberator.

Yet amid all these acts of violence and treachery, Napoleon had still kept before them the idea of a separate kingdom of Italy, if not in the present, then in the not distant future. If Napoleon failed them, Eugène Beauharnais might realise the ideal with which his step-father had mocked them; if Eugène Beauharnais proved false, King Joachim of Naples might lead them to freedom.

And then, most wonderful of all! came the announcement that the Austrian might become, in his turn, the liberator. In 1809, Archduke John had promised to the Italians, in the name of the Emperor Francis, "a Constitution founded on the nature of things, and a frontier inaccessible to any foreign rule. Europe well knows," continued the Archduke, "that the word of this Prince is sacred, and that it is as unchangeable as it is pure. It is Heaven that speaks by his mouth."

General Nugent, the leader of the Austrian forces, followed up this proclamation, at a later time, by equally strong promises of Italian independence, and as late as April 26, 1814, Lord William Bentinck, the founder of the Sicilian Constitution of 1812, had added his guarantee for the liberty, prosperity, and independence of Italy.

The Italians, therefore, had some hopes of justice from the Powers of Europe. These were shaken by the Congress of Vienna; and the Lombards received a new shock when they found how unreal were even the seeming concessions made by that Congress. A central Congregation of Lombardy, which had no power of initiating reforms, and hardly leave to utter complaints, was the sole embodiment of the principle of Italian independence; and the "frontier guaranteed against the foreigner" was unable to exclude, not only Austrian soldiers from the garrisons of Lombardy, but even Austrian judges from her tribunals, and Austrian professors from her universities; secret tribunals tried Lombards, who were arrested for they knew not what cause; taxes out of all proportion to the size of Lombardy drained the country for the benefit of other parts of the empire; and police dogged the footsteps of the most distinguished citizens.

Nor could Lombardy be even certain of her own sons. The wisest Lombards might well have been confused by the rapid changes of government which had taken place in the short space of eighteen years. They had seen Austrian tyranny give place to a Cis-Alpine Republic; they had passed from republican rule by somewhat confused stages under the despotism of Napoleon, a despotism which had in its turn to give way to the freer rule of Eugène Beauharnais; and lastly they had seen Beauharnais overthrown, and Austrian rule restored in a more crushing form than before.

Not merely their political judgment, but their sense of right and wrong had been unsettled by such changes. When men of high genius, like the poet Vincenzo Monti, could begin his literary career by a fierce poem against France, continue it by songs in praise of the French conquerors as promoters of liberty, then write eulogies on Napoleon's empire, and finally join in the inauguration of a library, which was to be the means of reconciling the Italians to their Austrian conquerors, it can scarcely be wondered at if men of lower intellect found themselves equally ready to worship each new ruler as he rose into power, and to trample on the memory of fallen heroes.

A man of nobler type than Monti expressed, perhaps still more clearly, the sense of despair which seemed likely to become the keynote of Italian feeling. Ugo Foscolo was, from his very birth, an embodiment of the confused state of Italy at that period. He was born in 1778, in the Isle of Zante, then a colony of the Venetian Republic, and in a condition of the utmost lawlessness. He was sent from thence to study at Padua, and thus grew up to manhood during the period of those continual changes in Lombardy which marked the period of the struggle against France. At one time he thought of becoming a priest, but soon devoted himself to literature.

The sole models for the Italian dramatists, at that period, were the writings of Vittorio Alfieri, whose feelings and literary taste had led him to adhere, as closely as he could, to the old classical traditions. At the age of nineteen Foscolo chose, as his first subject for a drama, the horrible story of Thyestes; but though this work was received with great applause, his literary career was, for a time, cut short by the Treaty of Campo Formio.

His political convictions seem already to have been strongly developed, for he was forced to leave Venice to escape the persecution of the new Government. Yet the creation of the Cis-Alpine Republic revived his hopes, and he hastened to Milan to take a share in the new life. There he became acquainted with the two leading poets of the day, Vincenzo Monti and Giuseppe Parini. From the former he gained several hints in style; from the latter he learnt the nobler lesson of hatred of corruption and servility. But the growing tyranny of Napoleon, the sense of the fickleness of his own countrymen, and the loathing of the rule of the Austrians, produced in Foscolo a bitter tone of cynicism and despair.

It was while in this state of mind that he fell in with Goethe's romance of Werther; and on this he modelled the strange rhapsodical story of Jacopo Ortis, in which the hero, disappointed in love and politics, takes refuge, like Werther, in suicide. But while the German romance was merely the expression of a passing feeling, which the author took pleasure in throwing into an artistic form, the Italian story was the deliberate expression of Foscolo's most permanent state of mind, and was accepted as the embodiment of the feelings of many other Lombard youths.

Foscolo, after fighting for the independence of Italy against the Austrian invasion of 1815, withdrew in disgust to England; but some of those who would gladly have welcomed him as a fellow-worker still remained in Lombardy, and tried to form a nucleus of free Italian thought.

Of these, the most remarkable was Alessandro Manzoni, best known to foreigners as the author of "I Promessi Sposi." Manzoni's influence was more widely felt in Italy at a later period; but the presence of such a man among the Lombard patriots of 1816-20 is too remarkable a fact to pass without notice. He, like so many other young nobles, had gone through a phase of eighteenth-century scepticism. But in 1808 he had been attracted by a beautiful Protestant lady, who, after her marriage to Manzoni, drifted into Roman Catholicism, and eventually led her husband to accept the same faith. Many of his old comrades denounced his conversion, and some even attributed it to evil motives. But they soon discovered that his new faith, far from weakening his Italian feeling, had strengthened, while in some sense, it softened it. The hard classicism of which Alfieri had set the fashion, and which Foscolo could not shake off, was repugnant to Manzoni, who desired to become the sacred poet of Italy, and who was recognized by Goethe as being "Christian without fanaticism, Roman Catholic without hypocrisy."

Manzoni disliked Eugène Beauharnais for wishing to derive his title to the kingdom of Italy from Alexander of Russia; but he sympathized with the attempt of Murat, and was ready to act with those Lombards who wished to rouse Italian feeling in literature and politics.

But though men like Foscolo and Manzoni had a wider and deeper influence in all parts of Italy, the person who most attracted the hopes of the Lombards and the fear and hatred of Metternich, at this period, was a man whose name is now little remembered outside his own country. This was Count Federigo Confalonieri. He, like so many of the better men of his country, had become equally disgusted with French and Austrian rulers; and, when a proposal was made by the Italian Senate in 1814 to secure from the allies an independent kingdom of Italy, to be governed by Eugène Beauharnais, Confalonieri headed a protest against the proposal. The Austrian spies seized the opportunity to stir up a riot against the Senate; and in this disturbance Prina, one of the ministers, was seized by the mob and murdered, in spite of Confalonieri's indignant protest.

The Senate fled; and the new Provisional Government of Lombardy sent Confalonieri to Paris, to plead for an independent kingdom of Lombardy. His appeal, however, was in vain; and, when the Austrians recovered their rule, Confalonieri was banished from Milan. He soon, however, returned, and devoted himself to developing in all ways the resources of his country. He had studied in London and Paris the principle of mutual instruction; and he founded schools for that purpose in Lombardy. He succeeded in getting the first steamboat built in Milan, introduced gas light, and encouraged all kinds of improvements, both artistic and industrial.

But his great work was the gathering round him, for literary and political purposes, of the great writers of Lombardy; and he founded a journal called "Il Conciliatore," to which contributions were sent by the poet Silvio Pellico, by the historians Sismondi and Botta, by Manzoni and Foscolo, and, amongst others, by a certain Lombard exile, who was afterwards to earn a short and sad celebrity in Italian history, Pellegrino Rossi. Thus, as a great noble encouraging the material growth of his country, as the centre of a literary movement, and above all as a known champion of freedom, Confalonieri riveted the attention of all who knew him.

But, however zealous this small knot of Lombards might be for the progress and freedom of their country, none of them supposed that Lombardy could throw off the yoke of Austria without assistance from other Powers. The question therefore was, to whom they should look for help.

Their nearest neighbour, the King of Sardinia, had some special grounds for grievance against the Emperor of Austria, besides the tradition of dislike which he had inherited from Victor Amadeus. That unfortunate king had had reason to regret the prominent part which he had taken in defying the French Republic in 1796. For he found that Francis of Austria was eager on every occasion to take advantage of the weakness of his ally. When Savoy was hard pressed by the French, the Austrians had demanded that, in return for any help that they might give to the King of Sardinia, he should surrender to them part of the territory in Lombardy which had been secured to him by recent treaties. Victor Amadeus endeavoured to resist this proposal as long as he could; but he was induced by the pressure of English diplomatists to consent that, if in the war any lands were taken from Austria, he would compensate the Austrians by part of the territory which they demanded.

Victor Emmanuel found in 1815 that alliance with Austria cost him as dear as it had cost his predecessor in 1796. For, even in the last desperate struggle against Napoleon, the Austrians demanded that the treaty of alliance between Austria and Sardinia should contain a clause for the destruction of the fortifications of Alessandria; and in the Congress of Vienna they tried to take from Victor Emmanuel the district of Novara. By the help of Alexander of Russia these intrigues were defeated; but the Austrians, in revenge, made all the delay that they could devise in evacuating Piedmont; and, when they finally left it in 1816, they destroyed the fortress outside Alessandria. Under these circumstances it was natural enough that the King of Sardinia should bear a bitter grudge against the House of Austria.

But, on the other hand, there was great reason to doubt whether Victor Emmanuel could be persuaded to take the lead in any war that savoured of revolution. For, hostile as he was to the claims of Austria, the newly-restored king resented yet more strongly the changes which had been introduced during the French occupation. On his restoration in 1814, he abolished by one sweeping Act all laws passed since 1800 in Piedmont; primogeniture, aristocratic privileges, ecclesiastical tribunals, tortures, secret inquisitions, were all restored. Even at the universities learned men were deposed, as likely to be friendly to the French, and were replaced by men who had no claim but their social rank. A system of espionage was introduced, at least as inquisitorial and degrading as that of Metternich, and it was soon found that to maintain that system it was necessary to sacrifice national dignity, and to have recourse to the great master in the art of tyranny. Thus it came about that Austrian officers were chosen to control the police in Turin.

In two important respects the government of Victor Emmanuel was even worse than that of Austria. Clerical injustice and oppression were as distasteful to Francis and Metternich as they had been to Joseph and Leopold; while in Piedmont, on the contrary, friars and monks were allowed a licence which speedily became a new source of evil. The other point of difference was that, tyrannical and unjust as the Austrian tribunals were in cases where political questions were involved, they were perfectly pure in cases between man and man unconnected with politics; whereas in Piedmont judicial decisions were sold to the highest bidder.

Under these circumstances, the eyes of the champions of Italian liberty naturally turned to that kingdom from which the last effort had been made for the unity of Italy.

Naples had contributed a very large proportion of those who had died for the cause of liberty in the earlier struggles, and even before that time had produced at least one man who had left his mark on sciences which tended to promote good government. Gaetano Filangieri had been one of the most distinguished writers on law and political economy, and had gained great influence at one period over Ferdinand I. of Naples. Ferdinand himself, though intensely weak, and capable of cruelty under certain circumstances, was not a man of habitually cruel character, nor even of so despotic a temperament as Victor Emmanuel of Sardinia.

But, like most of the sovereigns of Italy, he found himself compelled to rely more and more on Austria for the re-establishment of his power. He appointed Nugent, the Austrian general, as the head of his army, and a central council interfered with the liberties which had grown up in Naples. His refusal to carry out the promises of liberty which he had made in his time of difficulty naturally irritated his people against him, while the recollections of Murat stirred in them the desire for new efforts for freedom.

But the great ally which Naples supplied at this time to the cause of liberty was the Society of the Carbonari. Connected by vague traditions with some societies of the past, Carbonarism had received its first distinct political shape in the year 1811, when Murat was reigning in Naples. In 1814, when Murat had shown signs of a despotic spirit, it transferred its allegiance to King Ferdinand, then reigning only in Sicily. When Ferdinand had been restored to the throne of Naples, he found Carbonarism a dangerous element in his kingdom, and he began to prosecute the members of the Society. This had not, however, deprived the Carbonari of their monarchical sympathies; they merely transferred them from Ferdinand to his son Francis, who, having assisted at the establishment of the Constitution of 1812 in Sicily, was supposed to be committed to the cause of liberty.

A vague talk about equality, and a more definite demand for the independence of Italy, constituted the programme of the Carbonari. But the Society was surrounded by various symbols of an impressive character, and its rules were enforced by a secret and vigorous discipline. It was evident that, in some way, it was suited to the wants of the time; for it spread rapidly from Naples to other parts of Italy, and took root both in Lombardy and Piedmont. In Lombardy it speedily attracted the attention of the Austrian police, and in 1818 several arrests were made; but such attempts merely strengthened the growth of the movement, and Carbonarism soon appeared in Spain.

In the latter country the betrayal of the Constitutional cause had been, perhaps, baser than in any other part of Europe.

With the exception of Frederick William of Prussia, no sovereign had owed more to the zeal of his people in the struggle against Napoleon than Ferdinand of Spain. In 1812, before he had been restored to his throne, he had been forced to grant a Constitution to his people, which, on recovering full power, he had abolished; and anyone who ventured to speak of liberty had been exiled or imprisoned. Among those who had been forced to fly from the country was Rafael del Riego, who had been one of the earliest to rise on behalf of Ferdinand against Napoleon. He had succeeded, by the help of the Carbonari, in establishing relations with many of the discontented soldiers in the Spanish army; and in January, 1820, he suddenly appeared at Cadiz and proclaimed the Constitution of 1812.

His success was rapid, and Ferdinand was compelled once more to swear to maintain the Constitution.

This, the first Constitution proclaimed since the downfall of Napoleon, was remarkable for its democratic character. Parliament was to have the power of making laws in conjunction with the king, and if they passed a law three times, the king was to lose the right of vetoing it. Ministers were to be responsible to Parliament. Freedom of the press was to be secured, and a Council of State was to advise the king on questions of peace or war and the making of treaties. At the same time, the nation was to prohibit the practice of any but the Roman Catholic religion.

The news rapidly spread to Naples; for not only was there continual communication between the Carbonari of Spain and those of Naples, but even official duty would make speedy communication necessary, since Ferdinand of Naples was the next heir to the Spanish throne, and it was therefore held that this Constitution would be binding on him. The Carbonari were ready for the emergency; and while some of them, in the city of Naples, were demanding concessions, the more revolutionary districts of Calabria and Salerno had already risen in open insurrection. Ferdinand was able to arrest some of the leaders in the city; but he soon found that the insurrectionary spirit had spread even among the generals of his army. Officer after officer declared for the Constitution; and even those who were not ready to take that step were suspected by, and suspicious of, their fellows. Guglielmo Pepe, known as a supporter of the previous movement of Murat, and at one time sentenced to death for his opposition to the Bourbon rule, was marked out by the Carbonari as their leader. He at first hesitated to join them, and was even chosen by Nugent to lead the king's forces against the insurgents; but Ferdinand distrusted him, and opposed his appointment, and Pepe was finally driven to accept the leadership of the revolution. On July 5th he gathered round him a great body of the officers and soldiers, and led them to Naples; and Ferdinand, finding that he had no one to rely upon, yielded to the insurgents and consented to the appointment of a provisional Junta (composed to a great extent of the previous supporters of Murat), and swore to accept the Spanish Constitution.

Metternich was greatly startled at the completeness of this popular victory. He had been convinced that, with a people like the Neapolitans, blood would flow in streams; and he was alarmed to find that the leading Carbonari were men of high character. He at once assumed that Alexander of Russia was at the bottom of the conspiracy; and he set himself to convert him once more to the side of order. But that fickle Prince seems never to have seriously resumed the championship of liberalism in Europe, after the death of Kotzebue; and though he may have wished occasionally to play with the Carbonari, and may have been flattered by their appealing to him, he was much more anxious to put in force those principles which M^me de Krüdener had taught him, which forbade kings to keep faith with those subjects to whom they had granted liberties. He therefore readily consented to come to Troppau, to consider the best means of checking the Neapolitan insurrection.

In the meantime, suspicions had arisen between the Carbonari and the old followers of Murat, and the want of organization in their forces seemed to doom the insurrection to failure.

But a still more fatal cause of division was the attitude of Sicily. The news of the proclamation of the Spanish Constitution had, at first, been welcomed there; but the nobles of Palermo cherished the recollection of that short time of independence when Ferdinand, driven out of Naples, had ruled Sicily as a separate kingdom; the Sicilian Constitution of 1812, which was welcome to the nobles of Palermo, as more aristocratic in its character than the Spanish Constitution, was acceptable to all the Palermitans as the symbol of Sicilian independence. The cry, therefore, of "the Constitution of 1812" was raised in Palermo, in opposition to the cry of "the Spanish Constitution."

A Neapolitan intriguer, named Naselli, did his best to fan the flame of this division; riots arose; and the news spread to Naples that the Sicilians were enemies of Naples, and were opposing the Spanish Constitution. The Palermitans, on their part, appealed to the King by the memory of the old fidelity which the Sicilians had shown him when he was in exile. The King, and some others, might have responded to this appeal; and General Florestano Pepe, who was sent to suppress the rising, ended by conceding to the Sicilians the right of deciding by popular vote between the two Constitutions. But the Neapolitan pride was excited; a cry arose that the King was surrendering an important part of the kingdom, and thereby violating the Constitution.

In the meantime, however, it had become clear that the preference of the Palermitans for the Constitution of 1812 was not shared by the whole body of the Sicilian people. Messina, followed by other towns, rose on behalf of the Spanish Constitution; and, while the Neapolitans were preparing new forces to suppress the rising in Palermo, the Palermitans were sending their troops against Messina.

During this state of confusion the news arrived that the representatives of the Powers at the Congress of Laybach had urged pacific means of intervention, but at the same time had advised the Neapolitans to modify their Constitution.

Under these circumstances, considerable alarm was caused by the news that the King intended to go to Laybach. Ferdinand, to check this alarm, declared to the Parliament that, whatever happened, he would defend the fundamental principles of the Constitution, freedom of the press, equality before the law, sole right of representatives to vote taxes, independence of judicial power, and responsible ministry. This speech, instead of calming the fears of the people, raised new alarms; for it seemed as though the King were meditating already some changes in the Government; and the people declared that they could only allow him to depart if he went to defend the Spanish Constitution. But Ferdinand earnestly assured them that he had meant nothing against the Constitution, and that, if he could not defend the rights of the people and the crown by his words at Laybach, he would return to defend them by his sword.

The Duke of Ascoli, an old friend and confidant of the King, asked him privately for more specific directions; and Ferdinand urged him to try to maintain peace; but, if it should be necessary, to prepare for war. With such promises, Ferdinand left Naples for Laybach in January, 1821.

In the meantime, the work of the Carbonari had been spreading in Piedmont; and other sects of a similar character, and with more definite objects, had sprung up by their side. Unlike the Neapolitans, the Piedmontese Liberals had no French political traditions, either to encourage or to hamper them. Although the House of Savoy was French in its origin, both rulers and people had been forward in their resistance to the aggressions of the French Republic. Their ideas of liberty were derived, not from France, but from their own poet, Vittorio Alfieri; and these ideas had been strengthened by the love of independence which they had developed in the struggle against France, and which was now wholly directed against Austria.

The risings in Spain and Naples had attracted the sympathies of the Piedmontese; and it was even rumoured that Victor Emmanuel I. himself had said that if his people demanded a Constitution he would grant it. His minister, Prospero Balbo, who had previously served under Napoleon, was supposed to have Liberal leanings.

But while all these circumstances tended to connect the desire for liberty in the minds of the Piedmontese with the support of monarchical principles, and while the absence of any interest in political affairs on the part of the peasantry, or the artizans, prevented any strong democratic organization, it was yet necessary, if the movement was to be successful, that there should be some leader who was not afraid of revolutionary measures. Such a man was Santorre di Santa Rosa, an officer who had fought in the royal guard against the French, and who was now a major of infantry in Turin. His sympathies were not only monarchical, but in some respects even aristocratic; and when the Spanish Constitution was first proclaimed, he was inclined to prefer some other Constitution like that of Sicily, or even the charter which had been granted in France. But, with keen insight, he quickly perceived that the Spanish Constitution had become a watchword which was thoroughly understood by the people, and that any new cry would only cause division.

Nor were the designs of Santa Rosa limited to his own State. He knew that no struggle for Piedmontese liberty could be successful which did not aim at throwing off the yoke of Austria; and that that could only be done by combining with the other States, which were groaning under the same oppression. The patriots of Lombardy were willing enough to act with the Piedmontese, for Confalonieri was already in communication with the Neapolitans and other Italian Liberals, and was ready to provide arms for the rising.

But there was still needed a figure-head who must be placed in front of the movement, if it was to retain any appearance of monarchical Constitutionalism.

Whatever casual remarks Victor Emmanuel may have let fall, it soon became evident that he was disposed to resist the Constitutional movement, and he even began to increase the guards about his palace. Charles Felix, his brother, the next heir to the throne, was known to be a yet sterner champion of despotism than the King himself; and it was under these circumstances that the eyes of the Liberals of Piedmont were for the first time turned to the head of the younger branch of the House of Savoy, Charles Albert, Prince of Carignano.

He had been brought up as a simple citizen in a public school, and had specially attracted attention by the favour which he had shown to Alberto Nota, whom he had made his secretary. Nota was a writer who had set himself to restore the national comic theatre in Piedmont, who had excited the suspicion of the courtiers of Victor Emmanuel by his Liberal principles, and who had at last been banished from Turin.

But, though the favour shown by Charles Albert to Nota was the fact in the Prince's life which had most impressed the Piedmontese, other influences had already been brought to bear on him; for he had also studied at Paris under an Abbé, who had impressed on him a loathing for the French Revolution. He was only twenty-three, and was still hesitating between the lessons of these rival teachers.

But before Santa Rosa and his friends could carry out their schemes, the first sign of protest against tyranny in Turin was given from a different quarter. Although the desire for liberty had not yet penetrated to the poorer classes of Italy, and though the leadership of these movements naturally fell into the hands of men of noble birth, like Confalonieri and Santa Rosa, yet there was another class in the State which was already full of the new ideas, and which was eventually to play an important part as a link between the more intelligent members of the aristocracy and the still silent classes of the community. The University students of Germany, Austria, and Italy, from the time of the gathering at Jena in 1816 down to the fall of Venice in August, 1849, were to hold a position in the great movements of the time which affected considerably the character of those movements, both for good and evil.

The share of the Turin students in the Piedmontese rising of 1821 was touched with a certain character of boyish frolic. On January 11th, some of the University students appeared at the theatre at Turin in red caps. The police at once arrested them. But their companions rose on their behalf and demanded that they should be tried by the tribunals of the University. In this demand they hoped that the professors would support them; but the rector of the college was opposed to the movement, and the professors were unwilling to interfere. Thereupon the students took matters into their own hands, took away the keys of the University from the door-keeper, placed guards at all the entrances, defended the two principal gates with forms and tables, tore up the pavements, and barred the windows. Then they despatched two delegates to Count Balbo, to entreat him to set free their comrades, or to hand them over to the authorities of the University.

The representatives of the provincial colleges flocked to the assistance of the Turin students; and the sight of the soldiers, who were called out to suppress their rising, only roused them to more determined resistance.

The delegates returned speedily, followed by Count Balbo himself, who promised to defend the cause of the students before Victor Emmanuel, if they would in the meantime remain quiet. The students, therefore, consented to wait for further news; but the soldiers remained encamped outside the University. Suddenly the attention of the soldiers was attracted by some boys coming out of school; and, irritated presumably at some boyish mischief, they attacked the children with bayonets. The students, indignant at the sight, threw stones at the soldiers, who thereupon charged the barricades of the University, and a general massacre followed.

The news of this massacre caused the most furious indignation in Turin, and tended to swell the growing revolutionary feeling. Charles Albert paid a special visit to the hospitals to console those who had been wounded by the soldiers.

But in the meantime the proceedings at the Congress of Laybach were alarming the lovers of liberty. The King of Naples, by all sorts of pretences, had tried to lull to sleep the vigilance of the Junta at home; but it soon became known that the Powers had resolved to suppress the Neapolitan Constitution, and in February, 1822, their forces were on the march to Naples. The Piedmontese Liberals were eager to protest against this violation of national independence; and their fears were further roused by a rumour that Austria was renewing her demands for the surrender of the Piedmontese fortresses. These rumours were specially rife in Alessandria, which had known the degradation of an Austrian occupation; and Victor Emmanuel in vain tried to convince the Alessandrians of the unreasonableness of this panic.

On March 6th, Santa Rosa and his friends went to Charles Albert and asked him to put himself at the head of the movement; and it was now that Santa Rosa discovered the character of the man with whom he had to deal, and left on record that saying which summed up the whole life of that unhappy Prince—"Voleva e non voleva" (He would and would not). On March 6th, says one writer, "I do not know if Charles Albert consented, but he certainly assented" to the proposals of Santa Rosa.

The rising was fixed for the 8th, but on the 7th Charles Albert had changed his mind and wished to delay the movement. Again Santa Rosa and his friends urged him to act with them, but without telling him on which day the insurrection was to break out.

There was, indeed, no time to be lost; for suspicions had already arisen of the designs of the Liberals, and arrests were being made. On March 10th, therefore, Count Palma seized on the citadel of Alessandria and proclaimed the Spanish Constitution. Almost at the same time Captain Ferrero occupied the little town of San Salvario and unfurled the Italian flag in the church. Students and soldiers readily joined the insurgents, and both King and Ministers in Turin were seized with panic. Orders came from the Powers at Laybach that Victor Emmanuel should march to Alessandria, and Balbo called on all loyal soldiers to return to Asti.

But Santa Rosa was as firm in his purposes as the Royalists were undecided. The Spanish Constitution was proclaimed in the fortress of Turin, and the soldiers, who were sent to attack the people, fled after a few shots; Charles Albert represented to the King the wishes of the people; and on the night of March 14th, Victor Emmanuel abdicated in favour of his brother Charles Felix, appointing Charles Albert Regent in Turin. On the following day Charles Albert, in his capacity of Regent, swore to accept the Spanish Constitution.

But it was soon apparent that one vigorous man could not make a revolution successful, when he had to depend on a nobility many of whom were servile admirers of Austria, and on a Regent who "would and would not." Men were appointed to posts in the new administration who had no claim to their office except their rank. The leaders in Alessandria suspected the leaders in Turin; while the hopes of persuading Charles Albert to declare war on Austria grew fainter and fainter.

In the meantime, the new King, Charles Felix, was residing in Modena, under the protection of the Grand Duke. Francis IV. of Modena had shown himself the most distinctly tyrannical of all the princes of Italy; while his extravagance and indifference to the welfare of his people had startled even Metternich. His relationship to the House of Savoy had led him to sympathise at first with Victor Emmanuel in his irritation at the arrogance of Austria; but that very same relationship now led him to hope that he might succeed to the throne instead of Charles Albert, if the latter offended the ruling Powers. He therefore readily supported Charles Felix in his protest against the proceedings of the new Regent.

Charles Felix, on his side, was a man of more rugged and narrow spirit than Victor Emmanuel, and had none of the sense of national dignity which occasionally interfered with the despotic inclinations of his brother. When, therefore, he issued from Modena a denunciation of the new Government, he did not scruple to add that, if order were not soon restored, his august allies would come to his rescue. In the same letter he ordered Charles Albert to go to Novara and place himself under the orders of Della Torre. "I shall see by this," said Charles Felix, "if you are still a Prince of the House of Savoy, or if you have ceased to be so." Charles Albert concealed this letter from his Ministers; and, after a few days of hesitation, fled secretly to Novara.

The feeble officials of Turin would have at once deserted the cause; but, in defiance of their opinion, Santa Rosa published a proclamation declaring that the King was a prisoner in the hands of the enemy, and that he, as Minister of Charles Albert, called on them to stand by the Constitution and declare war on Austria. One or two of the generals fled to Della Torre, at Novara; but at the same time the Genoese rose on behalf of the Spanish Constitution. Della Torre sent orders to Santa Rosa, in the name of the King, to resign his authority. Santa Rosa refused to recognize the King while he remained in a foreign country, and despatched a force against Novara.

But, in the meantime, the news came that General Pepe had in vain tried to rally his forces in defence of the Neapolitan Constitution; that his bands had been dispersed at the first attack of the Austrians; and that the Austrians, having crushed out the freedom of Naples, were marching northwards. The Russian Ambassador thereupon entreated the Junta to modify the Spanish Constitution. Some of the Ministers were inclined to consent; but Santa Rosa knew that to lose the Spanish Constitution was to lose the watchword of the Revolution; and no doubt he felt the indignity of yielding to a foreign ambassador. He therefore refused this proposal, and once more despatched forces against Della Torre, who was now preparing to march on Turin.

Colonel Regis, the leader of the Constitutional forces, succeeded in reaching Novara before Della Torre had begun his advance. The armies met outside the town; but in the middle of the battle the news arrived that the Austrians had crossed the Ticino and were marching into the country. Regis and Ferrero fought gallantly; but the double forces against them were too strong; and though they once or twice repelled the Austrian attack, the want of discipline of the Piedmontese soldiers, combined with the superior force of the enemy, led to a crushing defeat. Santa Rosa, finding it impossible to defend Turin, retreated first to Alessandria and then to Genoa; but the men on whom he relied had lost courage and hope; and he and such of his friends as were fortunate enough to reach Genoa were soon obliged to leave it again and to fly from Italy, most of them to fight in foreign countries for the liberty which they had lost at home.

The reaction set in with the greatest fury. In Piedmont the system of espionage was resumed with double force. The University was closed. Under the influence of favouritism, and in the absence of any free expression of public opinion, corruption of tribunals revived, and the Jesuits, who had lost power during the Liberal interregnum, speedily recovered it. In Naples, the Austrians, after recommending mildness to Ferdinand, yielded to his demands for the right to punish; and the sense of his dishonourable position seems to have called out in him a savagery which he had not previously shown; while the presence of the Austrian troops irritated the country into a state of intermittent insurrection.

Lord William Bentinck attempted a protest in the English House of Commons against a second destruction of Sicilian independence; but Castlereagh defeated the motion, and Sicily fell back under Neapolitan rule.

Metternich specially devoted himself to restoring order in Lombardy. He established an Aulic Council at Vienna to superintend the affairs in that province, so as to crush out still further any local independence. At the same time a special committee was formed at Milan to enquire into the conspiracy. Several leading conspirators were arrested. One tried to save his friends by confessing his own fault; but the confession was used as a new clue by the police. Confalonieri was urged to save himself by flight; but he answered, "I will not retire in face of the storm which I wish to confront. Let what God will become of me!" He was soon after arrested; and, after being kept in doubt of his fate for nearly two years, he was condemned to death. His case excited sympathy even in Vienna, where the Empress interceded for his life; and at last, after long entreaty, his sentence was commuted to imprisonment for life in the fortress of Spielberg. There Metternich in vain tried to extort from him the betrayal of his fellow-conspirators. But the crafty statesman little knew the result of this treatment. One of those who suffered imprisonment about the same time describes the effect of Confalonieri's influence by contrasting him with the head of the Austrian police in Lombardy. "Confalonieri and Salvotti seemed to represent, in the eyes of the Milanese, the angel of Liberty and the demon of Slavery, striving not more for the success of their respective causes than for the triumph of their individual personalities. About Confalonieri gathered the prayers of honest people, of men of feeling hearts, who saw in him an unfortunate persecuted being whom adversity clothed with all the lustre of devotion and courage."

This passage strikingly exhibits that noble, but illogical, popular instinct which so often confuses the hero and martyr with the mere victim of unjust oppression. Confalonieri had undoubtedly organized an insurrection, and his arrest and imprisonment might fairly be justified by the ordinary rights of self-defence which exist in every Government. Yet the instinct of horror and pity for this imprisonment had a truth deeper than logic. Under the system of government then prevailing, the prison or the scaffold was the natural place for such men; but the pity of it was that a system of government should prevail which logically necessitated the imprisonment of Confalonieri and the triumph of Metternich. And it was a sign of the deep folly of the latter that he called the attention of the public to this fact, and provided the cause of Italian unity with its first prominent martyr. The stories of Confalonieri's imprisonment spread from mouth to mouth, and were preserved as tender memorials. It was told, for instance, how, when his wife had visited him, he had tried to preserve the cushion on which her tears had fallen, and how the guards had insisted on taking it from him; how his friends had devised a plan for his escape, and he had refused to avail himself of it because his fellow-prisoners would not be able to escape with him; and lastly, of the continual pressure which had been brought to bear upon him to reveal the secrets of his fellow-conspirators, and his steady refusal to purchase health and liberty by their betrayal.

The defeat which despotism had sustained by the imprisonment, and still more by the persecutions, of Confalonieri would hereafter be plain. At present Metternich might think that he had conquered in Lombardy; but elsewhere he could not feel sure of victory, for there came to him at this time two unmistakeable warnings that he was no longer to be allowed to reign undisturbed in Europe.

Even at that very Congress of Laybach which succeeded in crushing out the independence of Naples, the question of Greece, which could not be so easily disposed of, came before the Powers, and puzzled considerably the mind of Metternich. The pietistic maunderings of Alexander might be made use of in defence of the rights of Roman Catholic kings, but he could not be persuaded that the principles of the Christian religion justified him in supporting the tyranny of the Turks over Christian populations. He had indeed abandoned the Wallachian leader, Alexander Ypsilanti, when he discovered that the rising in Wallachia was simultaneous with the risings in Naples and Piedmont; but the Greeks could not so easily be persuaded that their patron, the Czar of Russia, had deserted their cause.

The Hetairiai of Wallachia and Greece had done the same work which the Carbonari had accomplished in Spain and Italy; and on April 4, 1821, the Greeks suddenly rose at Patras and massacred the whole Turkish population. In three months the southern part of Greece was free; and by January, 1822, a Provisional Government had been formed, with Alexander Mavrocordatos at its head.

Religious feeling, classical sentiment, and the loathing of the barbarous rule of the Turks combined to rouse in Europe an amount of sympathy which Metternich could not afford to disregard. He admitted the right of Alexander of Russia to sympathise with the Greeks, both on the ground of Christian sentiment and on the pretext of rights granted by previous treaties with Turkey; and he even intervened diplomatically to secure concessions from the Porte to its Christian subjects.

But, though he felt the danger of the precedent which even this amount of concession to the revolutionary spirit would cause, Metternich yet believed that, by timely compromise and judicious diplomacy, he could bring back Alexander to sounder principles. The influence of Capo d'Istria was indeed an antagonistic power in the Court of St. Petersburg; but, on the other hand, Tatischeff, the rival minister at the Russian Court, seems to have been a mere tool of Metternich, and could be used effectively for the interests of Austria.

So successfully did this diplomacy work, in Metternich's opinion, that on May 31, 1822, he writes exultingly in his memoirs, that he has "broken the work of Peter the Great, strengthened the Porte against Russia, and substituted Austrian and English influence for Russian in Eastern Europe." So he wrote in May; in August of the same year "that upright and enlightened statesman," Lord Londonderry, committed suicide. Then George Canning became Minister for Foreign Affairs, and hastened to cut the knot which linked the interests of Austria with those of England.

The change in England's policy soon became evident. No doubt the feeling of dislike to Metternich had been gradually growing in that country. Its representatives had held aloof even from the Congress of Laybach; and when, in 1822, the Powers met again at Verona to encourage the French Cabinet in their attempt to restore Ferdinand of Spain, England entered a decided protest against the proceedings of the Congress. Nor did the protest remain a barren one. The invasion of Spain by the French was followed by the recognition of the independence of the Spanish colonies by England; and when the absolutist movement threatened to spread to Portugal, Canning despatched troops to protect the freedom and independence of that country.

It is amusing to note the growth of Metternich's consciousness of the importance of the opponent who had now arisen. "A fine century," he writes at first, "for these kinds of men; for fools who pass for intellectual, but are empty; for moral weaklings, who are always ready to threaten with their fists from a distance when the opportunity is good."

But in the following year he writes: "Canning's nature is a very remarkable one. In spite of all his lack of discernment, the genius which he undoubtedly has, and which I have never questioned, is never clouded. He is certainly a very awkward opponent; but I have had opponents more dangerous, and it is not he who chiefly compels me to think of him." And in 1824 he sums up this difficulty, satisfactorily to himself, in these words: "What vexes me with the English is that they are all slightly mad. This is an evil which must be patiently endured, without noticing too much the ludicrous side of it."

This outburst of insanity on the part of England naturally drove Metternich back into the arms of Russia; and this change became more congenial to him when, in 1825, the fickle Alexander died and was succeeded by the stern despot Nicholas.

It seemed, too, as if the Greek rising might end about that time in the success of the Turks. Ibrahim, the Pasha of Egypt, had come to the rescue of the Sultan, and was carrying all before him. Marco Botzaris, the chief general of the Greeks, had been killed in battle; and in 1826 the garrison of Messolonghi blew up their fortress and themselves to avoid surrendering to the Egyptian forces.

But Metternich soon found that, whatever objection Nicholas might have to revolution elsewhere, he felt as much bound to protect the Greeks as had Alexander before him; and in August, 1827, Nicholas consented to Canning's proposal that England, France, and Russia should send a fleet to the Bay of Navarino to enforce an armistice between the Greeks and the Turks. Then followed the celebrated battle which Wellington afterwards described as "that untoward event." This convinced even Metternich that the results of the Greek insurrection would have to be recognized by the Powers, and perhaps even secured by force. The Russian war of 1828 followed, and Metternich had to admit that the European alliance of 1814-15 was practically broken.

But though the effect of the Greek insurrection in weakening the chances of Metternich's system was certainly important, it soon began to be doubtful whether the change would be permanent. England, indeed, in spite of the death of Canning and the short rule of Wellington, was evidently hopelessly lost to the cause of despotism. But the revolutionary movements of 1830-31 seemed to leave far less trace of freedom in Europe than the previous risings of 1820-22. The July monarchy of Louis Philippe was soon forced to become Conservative; and the Belgian revolution seemed to have little connection with the other movements of Europe. The Polish rising and its sudden collapse only secured Nicholas to the side of despotism. The treachery of Francis of Modena to Ciro Menotti destroyed for a time the tendency to believe in revolutionary princes. The rising in Bologna, by compelling the intervention of the Austrians, strengthened their hold over the Papacy, and even enabled Metternich cheaply to pose as the adviser of reforms which, out of respect for the independence of the Papacy, he would not enforce.

But his greatest triumph of all was in Germany. There Constitutions had been proclaimed in Bavaria, Würtemberg, and Saxony; and Metternich resolved to follow up the Carlsbad Decrees by a still more crushing enactment. So it was decided at the Federal Diet of 1832 that a German prince was bound, "as a member of the Confederation, to reject petitions tending to the increase of the power of the Estates at the expense of the power of the Sovereign," and further, "that the internal legislation of the States belonging to the German Confederation should in no case be such as to do prejudice to the objects of the Confederation."

Thus Metternich had again triumphed; but it was for the last time. Two forces of very different kinds were already in motion, to undo the work of his life. Two men were about to cross his path, very different from each other in moral calibre, in width of sympathy, and in the means at their disposal, but alike in that power of reaching the heart of a People, for want of which the leaders of the previous Liberal movements had failed in their objects. These men were Giuseppe Mazzini and Louis Kossuth.

CHAPTER III.
FAITH AND LAW AGAINST DESPOTISM. 1825-1840.

Tuscany under Fossombroni.—"Il Mondo va da se."—The Antologia.—Romanticism v. Classicism.—Domenico Guerrazzi.—Giuseppe Mazzini.—His early career.—His experiences as a Carbonaro.—His plans in the fortress of Savona.—His first banishment.—Louis Philippe and the Italian Revolutionists.—Collapse of the rising of 1831.—Accession of Charles Albert.—Italian belief in him.—Mazzini's letter.—Charles Albert's position.—Mazzini's second banishment.—His influence.—La Giovine Italia.—Its enemies and friends.—Charles Albert's cruelties.—The expedition to Savoy.—Menz and Metternich v. Mazzini.—The special position of Hungary.—The County Government.—The Germanization of the nobles.—The Diet of 1825.—Szechenyi.—The Magyar language.—Material reforms.—Metternich and Szechenyi.—Wesselenyi.—The Transylvanian Diet.—Poland and Hungary.—Serfdom in Hungary.—The Urbarium.—Francis Deak.—Wesselenyi at Presburg.—Louis Kossuth.—His character.—His first work.—Arrest of Kossuth and Wesselenyi.—The protest.—Metternich's defeat.

While Piedmont and Naples had been vibrating between revolution and despotism; while the government of the popes had been steadily growing more tyrannical and unjust; and while the rulers of Parma, Lucca, and Modena had remained (with whatever occasional appearance to the contrary) the mere tools of Austria, the government of Tuscany had retained a peculiar character of its own.

The vigorous programme of reform, introduced by Leopold I. when the government first passed into the hands of the House of Austria, had not been further developed by his successors. But a tradition of easy-going liberality had been kept alive both under Ferdinand III. and Leopold II. Fossombroni, the chief minister of Tuscany, took for his motto "Il mondo va da se" (the world goes of itself); and thus a certain liberty of thought and expression continued to prevail in Tuscany that was hardly to be found in other parts of Italy.

This might have excited the alarm of the Austrian Government, and of the other princes of Italy; for conspirators condemned by them took refuge in Tuscany. But two circumstances protected this freedom. The fact that the ruler of Tuscany was a member of the House of Austria seemed to exclude him from the chance of ever becoming the leader of a purely Italian movement; and Metternich was, perhaps, not sorry to be able to show the opponents of Austria that an Austrian prince could be the most popular ruler in Italy. Secondly, Fossombroni, while so easy-going in internal matters, maintained a dignified independence in foreign affairs; and Ferdinand and Leopold had enough of the spirit of the founder of the dynasty to second the efforts of their Minister.

Thus, when the Austrian officials sent to Ferdinand a list of the Carbonari in Tuscany, with the request that he would punish them, he simply burnt the list; and when, on the death of Ferdinand in 1824, the Austrian Minister demanded that Leopold's accession should not be publicly notified until the terms of the notice had been approved by Austria, Fossombroni at once announced Leopold's accession as the only answer to this insolent demand. Lastly, in 1831, when the Austrians were trampling out the liberties of Bologna, Fossombroni prevented them from extending their aggressions in Italy by an invasion of Tuscany.

Here, then, it was natural that the thought of Italy, whether taking a literary or political form, should find its freest expression. The Conciliatore of Manzoni and Confalonieri had been suppressed in Lombardy, but its work was revived by the Florentine journal called the "Antologia." Manzoni's influence gained much ground here among the literary men, who connected the struggle between the old classicism of Alfieri, and the freer and more original writing to which the name of Romanticism was given, with the struggle for a freer life in Italy against the traditions of the past.

The writer who attracted the most attention, and whose name became most widely known among the Romantic School, was Domenico Guerrazzi. It is, perhaps, a little difficult for an Englishman to understand the attraction of this author's novels; but an Italian writer thus explains it: "The singularity of his forms and the burning character of his style, the very contradiction of principles that are perceived in his writings, gave to Guerrazzi the appearance of something extraordinary, which struck upon imaginations already excited by misfortunes and grief." Moreover, perhaps, Guerrazzi, more definitely than most of these writers, connected the literary movement with the political; and even in Tuscany he became an object of some alarm from his desire for Italian freedom.

He naturally gathered round him a knot of young men of more decided type than the ordinary contributors to the "Antologia;" and it was to him, therefore, that the proposal was addressed to revive in Leghorn a Genoese journal which had been just suppressed by the Sardinian Government. The proposal was probably made to Guerrazzi in the first instance by a young and enthusiastic Livornese named Carlo Bini; but the chief promoter of the enterprise was a young Genoese of between twenty and thirty years of age.

This youth was chiefly known as having recently sent to the "Antologia" at Florence an article on Dante which had been rejected by them, but which was subsequently inserted in another paper. Among his contemporaries at the University the new comer had already excited an enthusiasm which was not yet understood by the outer world. Such was the first appearance in public life of Giuseppe Mazzini.

Under the influence of a very earnest and remarkable mother, he had early been interested in the cause of Italian liberty, and he dated his first impression of the importance of this cause from an interview with one of the exiles who was about to leave Italy on account of his share in the struggle of 1821.

Mazzini had been intended by his father for the profession of the law; but he had already shown a decided preference for literature and politics; and while still at the University he had been influenced by the gloomy romance of Jacopo Ortis. But, though that strange book had deepened his feeling for the miseries of his country, the scepticism and despair which were its keynote could not long hold him in slavery. On him, as on all the greatest minds of Italy, Dante soon gained a powerful hold; and while he profoundly admired the "Divina Commedia," he learned from the "De Monarchiâ" that mystic enthusiasm for Rome and that belief in the theological basis for political principles which was to colour so deeply his later career.

The journal which, with Guerrazzi's help, Mazzini started at Leghorn was called the "Indicatore Livornese." It soon became so alarming even to the mild Tuscan Government that after some warnings it was suppressed.

Shut out for the moment from the literary expression of his faith, Mazzini turned to more directly political action. He felt that it was his duty to make use of whatever existing machinery he could find for carrying on the struggle for Italian freedom; and he therefore joined the Carbonari. The very formula of the oath which was administered to him, on entering this Society, seemed to suggest the inadequacy of this body for stirring up the faith of a people. For, instead of speaking of work to be done for the freedom or unity of Italy, the words of the oath merely exacted implicit obedience to the Order. Mazzini's spirit revolted alike against this slavery, and against the solemn buffooneries with which the rulers of the Order tried to impress those who joined it with the sense of its importance.[3] His irritation at the uselessness and tyranny of the Carbonari brought on him the stern rebuke of some of their leaders.

The July Insurrection of 1830, in France, woke new hopes in Mazzini, as in other Italians; but before he could join in any active movement, he was arrested at Genoa, and, without trial, was soon after imprisoned in the fortress of Savona. The explanation given to Mazzini's father, by the Governor of Genoa, of the reasons for this arrest affords a striking picture of the despotism of the time. The Governor said that Giuseppe was a young man of talent, very fond of solitary walks by night, and habitually silent as to the subject of his meditations; and that the government was not fond of young men of talent the subject of whose musings was unknown to it. The real cause of the arrest was Mazzini's connection with the Carbonari, which had been betrayed by a pretended member of the Society, who, however, declined to support his charge in public.

It was during this imprisonment that Mazzini came to the conclusion that the Society of the Carbonari had failed to accomplish the purpose for which it was founded, and that some new organization was required in its place. While he was considering the objects which such an organization should set before itself, there arose before his mind the idea of Italian unity. The failure of the local efforts of 1821 and 1831 had been due to the want of common action between the different Italian States; and the mystic enthusiasm for Rome supplied a poetical argument in favour of the practical conclusion which he drew from these failures. While too the treachery of Charles Albert and of Francis of Modena had left on Mazzini a deep-rooted distrust of kings, and inclined him to believe that a republic was necessary to solve the difficulties of his country, he was willing, as will presently appear, to accept any leader or form of government which should bring about the unity of Italy. Anarchy he loathed with all his heart. He thoroughly disliked the French doctrine of the Rights of Man; and he desired to assert authority when legitimately established.

But the great distinction between Mazzini and the other political leaders of his time was, that his aim was not merely to establish a form of government, but to imbue the people with a faith. The unity of Italy was not with him a mere political arrangement, but the working out of God's government over the world, a development of a nobler and better life.

This affected his attitude to the question both of the relation of classes to each other, and of the relation of Italy to the rest of Europe. Though he appealed to the working men of Italy with an effect that no previous politician had produced, he never appealed to them on the ground of purely selfish interests; for he felt that the special motives for improving their condition should always be subordinated to the general welfare of the nation. And it is a striking proof of the extent to which this side of his teaching has taken hold of his followers, that, in the demonstration to his memory at Genoa in the year 1882, among the banners borne in the procession, and inscribed with quotations from his works, was one on which were written the words "Fight not against the bourgeoisie, but against egotism, wherever it grows, under the blouse of the workman, as under the coat of the capitalist."

Italy too was to help in the regeneration of Europe, but not after the manner of the French Republic, by merely establishing a foreign tyranny, calling itself Republican, in the place of native kings. Patriotism, with Mazzini, was not the hard, narrow thing which it became in the minds of too many of the leaders of the revolution. The Peoples were to help each other in developing their own national life after their own fashion, and to respect each other's national claims as they claimed respect for their own.[4]

After long delay Mazzini was acquitted of the charge laid to him, no evidence being brought forward against him. Thereupon the Governor of Genoa appealed to Charles Felix to set aside the decision of the judges, and to condemn Mazzini. The King consented; and Mazzini was ordered to choose between banishment from Italy and confining himself to a place of residence in one of the small towns in the centre of Piedmont. He believed that the former alternative would offer him freer scope for action; and he sailed for France.

The hopes of the Italian exiles had been roused, first by the July Revolution in France, and secondly by the risings at Modena and Bologna. General Regis, who had played such an important part in the Piedmontese insurrection of 1821, was organizing with other exiles an expedition, composed of Italians and French, to go to help the insurgents who were still holding out in Bologna.

But the hopes of the insurgents were doomed to disappointment. Louis Philippe, after playing with them for some time, came to the same sagacious conclusion about Revolution that he afterwards announced with regard to war, viz., that to talk about assisting a Revolution, and to assist a Revolution, were two different things.[5] Just as the expedition was on its march, orders were issued to abandon it, and a body of cavalry were sent to enforce the command. Some abandoned the attempt; but Mazzini and a few friends escaped to Corsica, which was still Italian in feeling, though French in government; and there they hoped to organize an expedition to help the Bolognese.

The Bolognese, however, though gallant enough in their own struggles, were unwilling to commit themselves to a wider programme than the defence of their own State. So they refused to send to Corsica the money which was necessary for the expeditionary force. The Austrians soon after entered the Papal territory; and when they had crushed out the insurrection they were in many cases welcomed by the inhabitants as a protection against the cruelties of the Papal troops.

Two other points in the insurrection alone need notice. One was, that at the surrender of Ancona Terenzio Mamiani, already known as a philosophic writer, refused to sign the conditions of capitulation, and was consequently forced to go into exile. The other was that, while the representatives of the Pope showed themselves, as a rule, utterly reckless in violating the conditions under which the surrender of the towns was made, one honourably distinguished himself by keeping his word. This was the Governor of Imola, Giovanni Mastai Ferretti, afterwards Pius IX.

The movement, however, in spite of its scattered and disconnected character, had excited attention in Piedmont, and several leading Piedmontese Liberals had determined to press Charles Felix to grant a Constitution. Of these Liberals, the most remarkable were Angelo Brofferio, the future historian of Piedmont; Augusto Anfossi, hereafter to play so brilliant a part in the rescue of Milan from Austria; and Giacomo Durando, whose book on Italian nationality was afterwards to hold an honourable place among the writings which stirred up Italian feeling. The conspiracy was, however, discovered; the leaders of the movement were arrested; and, while the prisoners were still awaiting their trial, Charles Felix died, and Charles Albert succeeded to the throne.

During the time between the failure of the insurrection of 1821 and his accession to the throne, Charles Albert's only important public act had been his service in the French Army, which was suppressing the liberties of Spain. Yet, in spite of this act of hostility to the Liberal cause, and in spite of the recollections of his previous desertion in 1821, the Liberals still had hopes that he would become their champion.

This is a fact which requires more explanation than can be found in the mere desire on the part of the reformers of Italy to choose some King to lead them against Austria. After the treachery of Francis of Modena, no Liberal expected him to return to the cause which he had deserted; and, when Francis of Naples had succeeded Ferdinand I., none of the passing hopes, which had pointed him out in earlier life as a possible constitutional champion, could save him from the hatred which his tyranny deserved.

Nor must we be misled by the subsequent history of Italy into the theory that there was anything special in the traditions of the kingdom of Sardinia which should lead Liberals to fix their hopes on a ruler of that country. Victor Amadeus of Sardinia had been the foremost of the allies of Austria in the war against the French Republic; and though there were continual causes of irritation between the aggressive House of Austria and the rulers of the little monarchy, these were not of a kind to have attracted the sympathy of any large body of Liberals outside Piedmont. The only movement for the unity of Italy, previous to the movement of 1821, had come from Naples; unless, indeed, Eugène Beauharnais had intended Lombardy to be the centre of a similar attempt.

When we take all these points into consideration we must come to the conclusion that there was something in the personal character of Charles Albert which riveted the attention of Italian Liberals almost in spite of themselves; nor could any appearances to the contrary induce them to doubt that he had at heart a desire for the liberty and unity of Italy such as no previous Italian Prince had entertained.

It was, perhaps, the greatest proof of this strange fascination that Mazzini, Republican as he was, yet thought it well to yield to the strong feeling of the Liberals of Italy, and to give Charles Albert one more chance of playing the part of a leader.

Mazzini, therefore, addressed to the new King a letter in which he called his attention to the enthusiasm with which his accession was greeted. "There is not a heart in Italy whose pulse did not quicken at the news of your accession. There is not an eye in Europe that is not turned to watch your first steps in the career now open to you." He told him that the Italians were ready to believe that his desertion of their cause was the mere result of circumstances; and that, being at last free to act according to his own tendencies, the new King would carry out the promises that he had first made as a Prince. He warned him that a system of terror would only provoke reprisals; and that a system of partial concessions would not only fail to satisfy the wishes of the people, but would have an arbitrary and capricious character which would increase the existing irritation. "The people are no longer to be quieted by a few concessions. They seek the recognition of those rights of humanity which have been withheld from them for ages. They demand laws and liberty, independence and union. Divided, dismembered, and oppressed, they have neither name nor country. They have heard themselves stigmatised by the foreigner as the Helot Nation. They have seen free men visit their country, and declare it the land of the dead. They have drained the cup of slavery to the dregs; but they have sworn never to fill it again." Mazzini then calls on Charles Albert to put himself more definitely at the head of a movement for Italian Independence, and to become the King of a united Italy. The letter concludes with these words: "Sire, I have spoken to you the truth. The men of freedom await your answer in your deeds. Whatever that answer be, rest assured that posterity will either hail your name as the greatest of men, or the last of Italian tyrants. Take your choice."

Before we consider Charles Albert's answer, we must call to mind, once more, his position. He came to the throne in the very crisis of a conspiracy against his predecessor, and had hardly been able to realize what had been the intention of the conspirators towards himself. The Duke of Modena, who had plotted to remove him from the succession (a proposal discussed at some length in the Congress of Laybach), had just recovered his own Dukedom by Austrian help, and was no doubt watching with eager eyes any false step which his rival might make. Charles Albert, with all his liberal sympathies, was proud of being a prince of the House of Savoy; and he was surrounded by the courtiers of Charles Felix, who must have persuaded him that the dignity and independence of that House could only be maintained by opposition to the movement for reform.

There was, too, another influence which must never be forgotten in estimating the difficulties of Charles Albert. He was a strong Roman Catholic, at a time when the connection between reverence for the Pope and reverence for the Church was, perhaps, closer than it had been at most previous periods of the history of the Papacy. The commonplace tyrannies of Leo XII. and Pius VIII. had not wholly dispelled the halo which the heroic attitude of Pius VII.'s early days had shed round the Papacy; and it seems highly probable that the most puzzling act of Charles Albert's life, his share in the French invasion of Spain, had been due, to a large extent, to that strong religious sentiment which gathered in so peculiar a manner round the kings of Spain. A man influenced by such sentiments could not fail to remark that the most vigorous and determined of the insurgents of 1831 had directed their attacks against the Papacy; and it might well seem to him that a letter which called on him to oppose the Austrian restorers of the papal power was the utterance of an enemy to the religion of the country.

But the fact was, as Mazzini afterwards confessed, that any king who was to undertake the work which he had suggested to Charles Albert must possess at once "genius, Napoleonic energy, and the highest virtue. Genius, in order to conceive the idea of the enterprize and the conditions of victory; energy, not to front its dangers—for to a man of genius they would be few and brief—but to dare to break at once with every tie of family or alliance, and the habits and necessities of any existence distinct and removed from that of the people, and to extricate himself both from the web of diplomacy and the counsels of wicked or cowardly advisers; virtue enough voluntarily to renounce a portion at least of his actual power; for it is only by redeeming them from slavery that a people may be roused to battle and to sacrifice."

If such were the qualities required by any prince who undertook this office, what must have been needed from one who had to contend with a Power which had ten years before helped to crush out the aspirations of his people, and which was just then triumphantly ruling in the centre of Italy? A man of genius might have undertaken the task; Charles Albert was only a man who "would and would not." But, if Charles Albert refused to listen to Mazzini's appeal, he had no alternative but to protest against it; and he did so by banishing Mazzini, under pain of imprisonment if he should return to Italy.

Nevertheless, the letter had produced its effect on the nation. The demand for the unity of Italy had been openly and definitely made, and put forward as a boon to be struggled for by Italians, and not to be conferred by a foreign conqueror. The attention of the youth of Italy was at once attracted to the writer of the letter, and none the less that he was an exile. The personal fascination which he exercised even over casual observers may be gathered from the following letter, which seems to refer to this period. It was written by one of his fellow-exiles, describing his first sight of Mazzini in the rifle ground at Marseilles.

"I went into the ground, and, looking round, saw a young man leaning on his rifle, watching the shooters, and waiting for his turn. He was about 5ft. 8in. high, and slightly made; he was dressed in black Genoa velvet, with a large Republican hat; his long curling black hair, which fell upon his shoulders, the extreme freshness of his clear olive complexion, the chiselled delicacy of his regular and beautiful features, aided by his very youthful look, and sweetness and openness of expression, would have made his appearance almost too feminine, if it had not been for his noble forehead, the power of firmness and decision that was mingled with their gaiety and sweetness in the bright flashes of his dark eyes, and in the varying expression of his mouth, together with his small and beautiful moustache and beard. Altogether, he was at that time the most beautiful being, male or female, that I had ever seen, and I have not since seen his equal. I had read what he had published; I had heard of what he had done and suffered, and the moment I saw him I knew it could be no other than Joseph Mazzini."

It was under such auspices that the Society of Young Italy was founded. The general drift of the principles of that Society has already been sufficiently indicated in the account of Mazzini's meditations in the fortress of Savona. It was to make Italy free, united, Republican, recognizing duty to God and man as the basis of national life, rather than the mere assertion of rights. But the great point which distinguished it from all the other societies which had preceded it was that, instead of trusting to the mysterious effect of symbols, and the power of a few leaders to induce the main body of Italians blindly to accept their orders, it openly proclaimed its creed before the world, and even in the articles of association set forth the full arguments on which it grounded the defence of the special objects which it advocated. And the principles were further to be preached in a journal which was to be called, like the Society, "Giovine Italia."

But while he put forward a definitely Republican programme, Mazzini never fell into the French mistake of thinking that a knot of men, monopolizing power to themselves, can, by merely calling themselves Republicans, make the government of a nation a Republic. While he fully hoped, by education, to induce the Italians to accept a Republican Government, he was quite prepared to admit the possibility of failure in that attempt, and to accept the consequence as a consistent democrat. This is distinctly stated in the first plan of Young Italy.

"By inculcating before the hour of action by what steps the Italians must achieve their aim, by raising its flag in the sight of Italy, and calling upon all those who believe it to be the flag of national regeneration to organize themselves beneath its folds—the association does not seek to substitute that flag for the banner of the future nation."

"When once the nation herself shall be free, and able to exercise that right of sovereignty which is hers alone, she will raise her own banner, and make known her revered and unchallenged will as to the principle and the fundamental law of her existence."

Plentiful as was the scorn and misrepresentation showered upon Mazzini and his doctrines, the two years from 1831 to 1833 brought a vast number of supporters to the Society of Young Italy; and the revolutionary movement in other countries gained organization and definiteness of purpose from this model. In the meantime, the Government of Louis Philippe was becoming more and more definitely committed to the cause of reaction; and every kind of slander was being circulated by Frenchmen against the Society of Young Italy. The theory that this Society undertook to exterminate all who disobeyed its orders was supported, by attributing to its action any casual violence which might take place in the streets of Paris; and though Mazzini prosecuted one of these slanderers for defamation a few years later, and compelled him to make a complete retractation in the law courts, the slander was too convenient to be allowed easily to drop.

On the other hand, men of the older type of revolutionist, who had drawn their ideas from the first French Republic, and had afterwards hoped to find their realization in the methods of the Carbonari, objected to Mazzini as "too soft and German" in his ideas.

But nevertheless some who were afterwards known in other ways came forward to contribute to the Journal of Young Italy. Amongst them may be mentioned the historian Sismondi and a future opponent of Mazzini, the Abate Vincenzo Gioberti. By 1833 the Society had established centres in Lombardy, Genoa, Tuscany, and the Papal States, and it was resolved to attempt an invasion of Savoy.

For, in spite of the promises which Charles Albert had held out of reforms in the government, the prosecutions for the conspiracy of 1831 were being carried on with renewed rigour, and the prisons of some of the chief towns of Piedmont were filled with men in many cases arrested on the barest suspicion, and who were threatened with death if they would not reveal the secrets of their fellow-conspirators. Such cruelties were used to extort confessions that Jacopo Ruffini, a young friend of Mazzini's, committed suicide in prison for fear he should be compelled to betray his friends.

The news of these acts quickened the eagerness of the Italians for the invasion of Savoy, and they desired to co-operate with men of other countries. Among these, there were few from whom they expected so much sympathy as the Poles. Unable to organize successful insurrections in their own country, the Poles were scattered over Europe, a revolutionary element in every land in which they were to be found. They, like the Italians, had at first expected sympathy from the July monarchy in France. They, too, had been bitterly disappointed. But this had not prevented them from maintaining a centre at Paris; and many of those who had fought in vain in 1830 for the liberty of Poland came back to Paris to learn there what further was to be done.

Amongst these came a man named Ramorino, a Savoyard by birth, who had acted as a general in the Polish struggle of 1830. The part which he had played in that insurrection was only known very indistinctly to most of the Italians who were organizing the new expedition; but the mere fact that he had been a leader in a war for liberty was enough to make them desire his help. Mazzini had gathered from the Polish exiles the opinion generally held of Ramorino by those who knew the facts of the insurrection of 1830. He found that the reputation which Ramorino had held at that period was very low, both for trustworthiness and military ability; and he opposed his election as leader of the expedition to Savoy. The only result of the opposition was a charge against Mazzini of personal ambition.

The expedition had already been weakened by the opposition of one of those fanatical revolutionists who had before denounced Mazzini as too soft and German in his ideas. This man, who bore the honoured name of Buonarotti, had complained of the members of the expedition for admitting men of noble rank and some wealth to the position of leadership in it, and he had succeeded in detaching from the movement an important section of its supporters. Mazzini, therefore, saw that, under these circumstances, to lose the friends of Ramorino would ruin the chances of the expedition; and, feeling that any further opposition would only excite division, he consented to act with Ramorino.

The new leader soon showed his true character by hindering the expedition as long as possible; but in February, 1834, he yielded to the pressure of Mazzini and began the march. Unfortunately, Mazzini was seized with a fever on the route, and Ramorino, finding this obstacle to his treachery removed, ordered the columns to be dissolved and rode away.

Plenty of scorn was heaped upon the failure of this first expedition of Young Italy. But Metternich, at any rate, judged more truly. In April, 1833, he had written to the chief of his spies in Lombardy to warn him against the growth of a new revolutionary party, and particularly against the advocate Mazzini, one of the most dangerous men of the faction; and he told him to procure copies of the journal called "La Giovine Italia," and two copies also of Mazzini's pamphlet about guerilla warfare. Menz, the spy in question, while believing that the journal of Young Italy was losing ground, yet considered that it was the most dangerous of the newspapers which circulated in Lombardy.

This request of Metternich's was, indeed, made a few months before the actual invasion of Savoy, and Menz, no doubt, began to think that after that failure the power of Mazzini would decline; but it is tolerably clear that Metternich did not share that delusion, and kept his eye steadily on the new leader. Nor did even Menz believe that mere repression would now suffice to win the sympathies of the Lombards to Austria, and he proposed to divert the intellectual zeal of disaffected Lombards into a direction favourable to the State by offering prizes for the solution of questions in different branches of human knowledge. From the winners of these prizes, he thought, might be chosen professors, inspectors, and directors of studies, and encouragement might be given to compositions of poems and paintings, of which "the subject, and even the colour," was to be dictated by Government.[6]

He further proposed that, with this object, an Academy of Poetry should be founded in Lombardy, under the absolute direction of the Austrian Government, who are to see that the nation should take part in an intellectual movement "with a correct view, and that these productions of the imagination, bearing the impress of a tendency profitable to the well-being of society, would, in their turn, act in a very favourable manner on the public spirit."

Further, as "the Circus was in the time of the Romans the secret means of the State for rendering the people submissive to the Government," ... so "the Austrian Government should give a very generous subsidy to the theatre of La Scala (at Milan); but it would be also desirable that it should make some sacrifice for the provincial theatres." A few modifications of the Austrian code, some reduction on customs duties, and lessening of the restrictions on passports, are also suggested in the Report. Such were the means by which the trusted servant of Metternich hoped to counteract the influence of Mazzini and Young Italy.

But in the meantime another form of opposition to the power of Metternich was growing up in a country very different from Italy, both in its circumstances and the character of its people.

While, in all other countries of Europe, Metternich looked upon every approach to self-government with suspicion, and tried to crush it out either by force or diplomacy, both he and Francis recognized that in Hungary there were reasons for maintaining and even encouraging Constitutional feeling.

For here the Constitutional rights did not rest upon any revolutionary basis; at any rate, not upon any revolution of modern times. They were not connected with the sort of national aspirations which made the movements in Italy and Germany so alarming to Metternich. There was, as yet, no desire here to redistribute the country according to popular aspirations; all rights rested on clearly defined laws handed down from a distant past, and in many cases these rights had been the subject of a peaceable contract between the previous rulers of the country and the House of Austria. So much was this felt by Francis that he even appealed on one occasion to the Hungarian Diet for sympathy against the revolutionary methods of Liberal leaders of other countries.

But, indeed, had the liberty of the Hungarians depended, like that of other nations, on the assertion of the power of a central parliament, they might have been crushed as the other peoples had been; for from 1813 to 1825 no Diet met in Hungary. But the full force of Hungarian liberty dwelt in the organization of those county assemblies which the Magyars had probably derived from the conquered Slavs. The Government could not enforce its laws except through the county officers, all of whom, with one exception, were elected by the landholders of the district. That one Government official was bound to call together once a year a meeting of the nobles and clergy of the county. There the wants and grievances of the district were discussed, and orders were sent to the representatives of the county in the Diet at Presburg to introduce bills to remedy those grievances.

These county assemblies could raise taxes and levy soldiers; and they not only possessed, but exercised the right to refuse to obey the orders of the King himself if, after discussion, such orders proved illegal.

In the county elections all freeholders of Hungary had votes; and in the smaller village elections the suffrage was still wider. The electors in the villages chose, not only legislators, but judges of their village concerns. The non-freeholding peasantry were, indeed, often oppressed; the towns were in a backward state as regards self-government; but yet this system of county organization secured a wider diffusion of general interest in political affairs than prevailed in any other country of Europe.

At the same time, there were elements in Hungary which might give Metternich some hopes that he could drain out the forces of Hungarian liberty. The Magyar nobles were drawn more and more to Vienna; and a process of Germanization was going on of so effective a kind that many of the nobles had almost forgotten their own language. Thus, though the Magyar aristocracy had more often acted as champions of independence than the nobles of any other country in Europe, they were gradually being drifted away from the main body of the people, and were becoming absorbed in the ranks of Austrian officialism. But when the Spanish Revolution of 1820 began to stir men's minds, the discussions in the Hungarian county assemblies took a wider range, and representations were made to Francis which he could not long resist. He did not at first, indeed, realize the full force of the opposition, and in 1822 he tried to levy new taxes on the Hungarians without summoning the Diet. But this attempt failed, and in 1825 the Diet at Presburg was once more called together.

It seemed, indeed, to some of those who afterwards played a prominent part in the struggles of 1848 as if little was gained by this Diet; and as if it was even less satisfactory than its predecessor of 1791. But a movement was inaugurated on this occasion which, though it may have contained in it the seeds of future misunderstanding, and even of civil war, was yet in its beginning as noble in its intention as it was necessary to the welfare of Hungary; and, had it been pursued in the spirit of its first leader, might have produced in time all the blessings which have since been secured to Hungary, without any of those terrible divisions and bitternesses that hinder those blessings from producing their full effect.

The leader of this new movement was Count Stephen Szechenyi, a member of one of the great families of Hungary. His father had held office at the Court of Vienna, but had grieved over the process of denationalization which was going on among the nobles of Hungary.

Count Stephen was early trained to sympathize with the desire for the restoration of Hungarian life. He saw that the withdrawal of the great nobles from Hungary to Vienna led to the mismanagement of their estates, the growth of an evil class of money-lenders, and the separation between the aristocracy and the rest of the nation.

The abandonment of the Magyar language was, in his eyes, the great source of all evil; and the Diet of 1825 afforded him the first opportunity of protesting against it. While the Hungarian nobles talked German in private, they used Latin in the management of public affairs; and Szechenyi, as a protest against this practice, spoke in the Magyar language in bringing forward a question in the House of Magnates.

But, before the Diet had risen, he gave a much more solid proof of his zeal for his native tongue. On November 3rd, 1825, he offered, in the House of Magnates, to give a whole year's income, 60,000 gulden, to found a Society for promoting the Study of the Magyar Language. His example was followed, with more or less zeal, by other nobles; and in 1827 a Hungarian Academy was established by Royal Decree.

The movement which Szechenyi had stirred up was in danger of being brought to ridicule by some of its supporters, for Count Dessewfy actually proposed that a law should be passed forbidding the marriage of any Hungarian maiden who did not know her native tongue; but this was resisted as too strong a measure.

But though Szechenyi opposed these wilder schemes of his supporters, he was none the less ready to use all possible attractions for carrying out his chief object, the drawing Hungarian nobles back to their country. As one of these means, he established a horse-race at Pesth, and founded a union for training horses. He promoted, too, the material advantages of Hungary by introducing steamships on the Danube.

The work to which he devoted most attention was the erection of a suspension bridge, to connect Pesth with Buda. Szechenyi's enthusiasm in this matter seemed to many ludicrously disproportionate to the result to be obtained; but the fact was that he intended this work to give the opportunity for the first blow at that great injustice, the exemption of the Hungarian nobles from taxation. If he could induce the Magnates to consent that the burden of so important a national undertaking should fall in part upon them, they might be willing hereafter to accept a more just distribution of the whole burdens of the State.

While, however, Szechenyi was labouring to promote Hungarian national life, and was willing to sacrifice personal comfort, and any unjust privileges of his order, for the sake of that object, he remained essentially the Conservative Magyar Magnate. He not only shrank from any movement for Constitutional reform, but even hoped to accomplish his ends with the sympathy of the Austrian Government.

It was not indeed that he was deficient in courage, or in the tendency to speak his mind plainly in private conversation. He said boldly that "the promises of the King are not kept, that the law is always explained in favour of the King to the disadvantage of the people; and, to speak plainly, affairs just now have the appearance as if the Constitution were being overturned." And in the same conversation he further nettled Metternich by suggesting to that statesman that his high position might prevent him from seeing some things.

Yet it was not merely offended vanity that irritated the ruler of Europe against Szechenyi. Metternich seems always to have had a preference for the thorough-going men among his opponents. He might hate and desire to crush them; but what pleased him was that he understood the logic of their position and, as he supposed, their motives. The moderate and Constitutional Liberals were always a puzzle to him. But when a man like Szechenyi actually thought that he could work with him, while undermining the centralization which was the essence of his schemes, and appealing to that positive form of patriotism which it was the object of Metternich to crush out, so inconsistent a position drove the Prince beyond the bounds of ordinary courtesy.

Taking advantage of his own high position and Szechenyi's youth, he told him that he was a man lost through vanity and ambition, asked him if he could really confess to his friends the kindly feeling to the Austrian Government which he had expressed to Metternich; and, on Szechenyi making some admission of the difficulties of such a course, "Then," said Metternich, "you must be a traitor either to me or to your friends, that is to yourself."

But if Szechenyi's position was unintelligible to Metternich, he found it far easier to understand another nobleman who came forward a little later and played a different, but hardly less important, part. This was Nicolaus Wesselenyi, the descendant of a family of nobles who had constantly held their own against both king and People. The father of Nicolaus had been a fiery, overbearing man, who had indulged in private feuds, and who had fought scornfully for the special privileges of the nobles. His son had all the fire of his family, and the same love of opposition, but directed by the circumstances of the time into healthier channels.

It was not, however, at Presburg that the Wesselenyis had hitherto played their principal part, but at the Diet which met at Klausenburg, in Transylvania. The circumstances and organization of that peculiar province will be more naturally considered in connection with the movements which arose a few years later. For the present, the important point to remember in connection with Wesselenyi's position is, that the Austrian Government tolerated an unusual amount of freedom in the Transylvanian Diet, in the hopes thereby of weakening that larger Hungarian feeling which gathered round the central Diet at Presburg. When both the Hungarian and the Transylvanian Diets were called together in 1830, and a demand was made by the Emperor for new recruits for the army, the House of Magnates in Transylvania showed, under Wesselenyi's leading, a bolder and firmer opposition than the House of Magnates at Presburg. In the central Diet, indeed, the chief opposition to the Emperor came from the Lower House, and the nobles were disposed to yield to the demands of Francis. But Wesselenyi, with his splendid bearing and magnificent voice, stirred up a far more dangerous opposition in Transylvania; and the Government at Vienna began to mark him out as their most dangerous opponent.

But in the meantime new questions were coming to the front in Hungary, and new leaders were being called forth by them. The Polish insurrection of 1830 had roused more sympathy in Hungary than probably in any other country of Europe; and a connection between the two nations was then established which had a not unimportant influence on the subsequent history of Hungary.

The wiser men among the Hungarian leaders saw the great defect which marred all struggles for liberty in Poland. Whatever aspirations may have been entertained by the Polish patriots of 1791, certain it is that, when Poland fell before the intrigues of Russia and Prussia, the new Constitution had not had time to bring about any better feeling between noble and peasant; and the Polish peasantry looked with distrust and suspicion on movements for freedom inaugurated by their oppressors.

The Hungarian reformers saw that, if they were to make the liberties of Hungary a reality, they must extend them to the serf as well as to the noble. In spite of the air of freedom of discussion which the County Assemblies of Hungary spread around them, there were, at this time, out of the thirteen millions of Hungarians, about eleven million serfs. These were not allowed to purchase an acre of the soil which they cultivated; they paid all the tithes to the clergy and most of the taxes to the State, besides various payments in kind to their landlords; their labour might be enforced by the stick; while for redress of their grievances they were obliged, in the first instance, to apply to the Court over which their landlord presided.

The reigns of Maria Theresa and Joseph II., while modifying the evils of the position of the serf, had taught him to look to the Court of Vienna, rather than to the Diet of Presburg, for help in his troubles.

The Edict of Maria Theresa, called the Urbarium, had granted the peasant the right of leaving the land when he pleased, or of remaining if he liked, while he complied with certain conditions; and by this act he was allowed to bequeath the use of his land to his descendants. Further, a right of appeal had been granted from his landlord's decision to the official court at Buda, known as the Statthalterei. By the same law the labour to be performed by the peasantry had been fixed, instead of being left to the will of the lord, as heretofore.

The reforms of Joseph II. had, like most of his attempts, been too vigorous to be lasting; but he had done enough to strengthen in the minds of the oppressed peasantry of Hungary the desire to look to the Emperor as their liberator. Thus the satisfaction of the claims of humanity had tended to weaken Constitutional freedom.

The bitter feeling between noble and peasant was illustrated most painfully in the year 1831, when an outbreak of cholera in Hungary was attributed by the peasantry to the poisoning of the wells by the nobles. Agrarian risings had followed, and more than fifty peasants had been hung without trial.

Such was the state of feeling when the Diet of 1832 met at Presburg. Had the leader of the movement for agrarian reform been a mere champion of Constitutionalism, the work of drawing together the peasant and noble might have been more difficult. But fortunately the work fell into the hands of a man who, though not deficient in powers of oratory, was far less a popular leader than a thoughtful and humane student of affairs. This was Francis Deak, then thirty years of age, trained, like so many leaders of the time, for the bar, and already known as a speaker in the County Assembly of Zala. He was not a man of the delicate, cultured type of Szechenyi; nor did he possess the commanding figure and lion voice of Wesselenyi. He was broad and sturdy in figure, his face was round and humorous, and his eye twinkled with fun. Yet he was not without a deep shade of melancholy. He was a man who inspired in all who came near him a sense of entire trust in his honesty and steadiness of purpose; and this feeling, though unlike the enthusiasm which is roused alike by the highest genius and by merely popular gifts, was yet exactly the form of confidence needed to enable Deak to do the special work which lay before him.

The question of the reform of the Urbarium he at once made his own. Besides the miseries of the peasantry above mentioned, they were continually exposed to all kinds of petty tyrannies. Their horses were liable to be seized by tourists through the country, and soldiers were billeted upon them. Deak demanded the extension to the peasant of the right of buying land, and better security for person and property.

But it soon became evident that, whatever exceptions there might be to the rule, the Magnates of Hungary were not prepared to surrender their privileges. The point which the reformers specially insisted on in the new Urbarium was a clause enabling the peasant to free himself from his feudal dues by a legal arrangement with the landlord. Thirteen times the Lower House of the Diet passed the clause; thirteen times the House of Magnates rejected it; and when at last that House consented to pass it, the Emperor vetoed it.

The reformers were now clearly justified in calling on the people to recognize them as their champions against both nobles and sovereign. But in order to prevent this recognition the Government had forbidden any publication of the debates.

Wesselenyi had met this difficulty in the Transylvanian Diet by introducing a private press of his own, with the help of which he circulated a report of the proceedings. This so alarmed the Government that they dissolved the Transylvanian Diet and established an absolute ruler in that province. Wesselenyi then transferred his eloquence to the House of Magnates in Presburg, where he thundered against the Government for opposing the liberties of the peasantry, denouncing them in the following words: "The Government sucks out the marrow of nine million of men (i.e., the peasantry); it will not allow us nobles to better their condition by legislative means; but, retaining them in their present state, it only waits its own time to exasperate them against us. Then it will come forward to rescue us. But woe to us! From freemen we shall be degraded to the state of slaves."

But the work which Wesselenyi had half done for Transylvania was to be carried out for Hungary more thoroughly by a man who had been gradually rising into note. This was Louis Kossuth, of whom it may be said that, more than any other man in Europe, he was the author of the Revolution of 1848. He was a few years older than Francis Deak, and, like him, was trained as a lawyer. He had been appointed, in the exercise of his profession, arbitrator between several wealthy proprietors and their dependants. In this position he gained the confidence of many of the peasantry, and he was also able to give them help in the time of the cholera.

He possessed a quick and keen sensibility, which was the source of many of his faults and of his virtues. A curious illustration of this quality is shown in his renunciation of field sports, in consequence of reading a passage in a Persian poet on the duty of humanity to all living things. No doubt it was to this sensibility that he owed a large part of that matchless eloquence which was to be so powerful an engine in the revolutionary war. It was connected, too, with the keen statesmanlike instinct which enabled him to see so often the right moment for particular lines of action; and which, had it been united with a wider sympathy, stronger nerves, and a more scrupulous conscience, might have made his career as useful as it was brilliant.

KOSSUTH LAJOS.

This instinct it was which enabled him to see at this crisis that nothing could be effected for Hungary until the work done in the Diet was better known to the main body of the people. The private press which he now started may have been suggested to him by Wesselenyi's attempt in Transylvania; but its work was carried out with an ingenuity and resourcefulness which were altogether Kossuth's own. The Government became so alarmed at this press that they wished to purchase it from him, but, wherever print was hindered, he circulated written correspondence. Nor did he confine his reporting to the debates in the Diet of Presburg, for he circulated also reports of the county meetings.

The Count Palatine, the chief ruler of Hungary, tried to hinder this work; but the county officials refused to sanction this prohibition, and thus deprived it of legal force.

The Government was now thoroughly roused; and in May, 1837, Kossuth was indicted for treason, arrested, and kept for two years in prison without any trial.

But great as was the indignation excited by this arrest, it was as nothing compared to the storm which was aroused by the prosecution and imprisonment of Wesselenyi. The Government had marked him out during the Transylvanian debates as an enemy who was to be struck on the first opportunity. The printing of the Transylvanian reports would have been followed very speedily by a prosecution, had he not escaped into North Hungary; but his speech against the Government in the Presburg Diet gave a new opportunity for attack.

The enthusiasm which his prominent position, impressive manner, and high rank had caused had been strengthened in Transylvania by the extreme personal kindness which he had shown towards his peasantry; and one of them walked all the way from Wesselenyi's Transylvanian estate to Vienna to petition, on his own behalf and that of one hundred fellow-peasants, that their landlord might be restored to them.

Had Francis been still on the throne, it is possible that Metternich would have offered further resistance to the popular demands. But Francis had died in 1835, the year before the closing of the Diet. His successor, Ferdinand, though, chiefly from physical causes, too weak to hold his own against Metternich, was a kindly, easy-tempered man, not without a sense that even kings ought to obey the law.

But whether Metternich or Ferdinand were to blame in the matter, the concessions of the King were made in a hesitating and grudging manner which took away their grace, and made the defeat more vividly apparent both to victors and spectators.

A more popular Chancellor of Hungary, Anton Mailath, was appointed; another member of the same family was made chief justice; and about the same time the Transylvanian Diet was restored. Hoping that he had now conciliated popular feeling, Metternich, in 1839, called together the Diet of Presburg and demanded four million florins and thirty-eight thousand recruits.

But the members of the Assembly had been instructed by their constituents to oppose any demands of the Government until Wesselenyi, Kossuth, and the members of a club who had been arrested at the same time, were liberated. And while Deak still led the opposition in the Lower House, Count Louis Batthyanyi came forward as the champion of freedom in the House of Magnates. Finally, the Emperor consented, not only to grant an amnesty to Wesselenyi, Kossuth, and others, but to pass that clause about the peasants' dues which he had vetoed in 1836. The Diet then voted the money, and was dissolved.

Thus, while in Italy a new faith was springing up which was to supply a force to the struggles for liberty that they had previously lacked, in Hungary the different, but hardly less effective, power of old traditions of Constitutional freedom was checking Metternich in his full career of tyranny, and forcing him to confess a defeat inflicted, not by foreign diplomatists, but by that very people who had rallied round Maria Theresa in her hour of danger, and who had sternly rejected the advances of Napoleon when he had invited them to separate their cause from that of the House of Austria.

CHAPTER IV.
LANGUAGE AND LEARNING AGAINST DESPOTISM. 1840-1846.

Contrast between position of German language in North Germany and in Austrian Empire.—Condition of Germany between 1819 and 1840.—Literary movements.—Protest of the Professors of Göttingen against abolition of Hanoverian Constitution.—Effect of the protest on other parts of Germany.—Position and character of Frederick William III.—His struggle with the Archbishop of Cologne.—Accession of Frederick William IV.—His character and policy.—Ronge's movement of Church Reform.—Robert Blum's share in it.—Language movement in Hungary.—Position and history of Croatia.—Louis Gaj and the "Illyrian" movement.—"The Slavonic ocean and the Magyar island."—Kossuth's treatment of the Slavonic movement.—Count Zay's circular.—The "taxation of the nobles."—Szechenyi's position.—Deak's resignation.—The Croats at Presburg.—Kossuth's inconsistency.—Ferdinand's intervention in the struggle.—The struggle of races absorbs all other questions.—History of Transylvania.—The "three nations."—The position of the Roumanians.—Effect of Joseph II.'s policy in Transylvania.—The "Libellus Wallachorum."—Andreas Schaguna.—Stephan Ludwig Roth.—General summary of the effect of the revival of national feelings.

'Twas from no Augustan age,
No Lorenzo's patronage,
That the German singers rose;
By no outward glories crowned,
By no prince's praise renowned,
German art's first blossom blows.

From her country's greatest son,
From the mighty Frederick's throne,
Scorned, the Muse must turn away.
"We have given thy worth to thee;"
"Let our heart-beats prouder be;"
Can each German boldly say.

So to loftier heights arose,
So in waves more swelling flows
German poet's minstrelsy.
He in ripeness all his own,
From his heart's deep centre grown,
Scorns the rule of pedantry.