ALEXANDER I  ., emperor of Russia) . It was clear from the first that any attempt to set up such a central government of Europe under a " universal guarantee " would imperil the independence of the sovereign states; and from the first Great Britain, represented by Castlereagh, pro- tested against it . She would consent to take common action on the basis of the treaties she had actually signed, consulting with her allies on each case as it arose; but to vague and general engagements she refused to commit herself . The attitude of Austria and Prussia was from the outset less clear . Metternich was torn between dread of revolution and dread of Russia; the Holy Alliance, though essentially " verbiage," might be useful in holding the imperial Jacobin in check; the " universal guarantee " could not but be discouraging to the " sects "; on the other hand, the extreme willingness of the tsar to march zoo,000 Russians for any " European " purpose in any direction convenient or inconvenient to Austria, was—to say the least—disconcerting . Frederick William III., on the other hand, though he too had signed the Holy Alliance with reluctance, in moments of panic saw in the " universal guarantee " his best defence against the renewed attack by France which was his nightmare . In effect, owing to the firm attitude of Castlereagh at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, " the transparent soul of the Holy Alliance " never received a body, though attempts were subsequently made at the congresses of Troppau, Laibach and Verona to apply some of its supposed principles—attempts that led to the definitive breach of Great Britain with the Alliance . The highwater-mark of the activity of the Allies as a central government for Europe was reached at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (q.v.) in 1818 . France was now admitted to the Alliance, the objects of which were reaffirmed by a public declaration to which she adhered; but at the same time a secret treaty renewed the compact of Chaumont between the four other powers . Certain questions outstanding from the congress of Vienna were referred for settlement to a ministerial conference to meet at Frankfort in the following year . The treaty which was the result of this conference was signed on the zoth of July 1819 . The bulk of it was concerned with territorial settlements in Germany: between Austria and Bavaria, and Bavaria and Baden; but some of the articles arranged for the cession of the border fortresses Philippeville and Mariembourg to the Netherlands, defined the frontiers of Savoy, and settled the reversion of the Italian duchies held by the empress Marie Louise .

Meanwhile the

balance of forces within the European concert had shown a tendency to shift . At the outset the restless activity of the emperor Alexander, his incalculable Alexander idealism, and his hardly veiled ambitions had drawn i of Austria and Great Britain togetherin common suspicion Russia and of an influence that threatened to be little less disturb- Mettering to the world's peace than that of Napoleon . But nick . at Aix Metternich had begun to realize that, in the long-run, the system of repression which he held to be essential to the stability of the European, and above all of the Austrian, polity would receive little effective aid from Great Britain, fettered as she was by constitutional forms; while Alexander, alarmed at the discovery of revolutionary plots against his person, had already shown gratifying signs of repentance . The " Jacobin " propaganda of the tsar's agents continued, it is true, especially in Italy; and, in spite of the murder of the dramatist Kotzebue, as a Russian emissary, by the fanatical " Bursche " Karl Sand, Alexander joined with Castlereagh in protesting against the reactionary policy embodied in the Carlsbad Decrees of October 1819 . But the murder of the duke of Berri on the 13th of February 1820 completed the Russian autocrat's " conversion." At the congress of Troppau, which met in the autumn of the same year, he was a " changed man," committed henceforth heart and soul to Metternich and his policy . The outcome of this new understanding was the famous Troppau Protocol, congress published to the world on the 19th of November 18zo, and pro. and signed by Austria, Prussia and Russia . The tocot of immediate occasion of this manifesto was the military Troppau, insurrection, under General Pepe, at Naples, by which 1820. the Spanish constitution of 1812 had been forced on the king (see NAPLES: History) . But the protocol embodied a general principle involving issues infinitely more important than any arising out of this particular question . " States which have undergone a change of government due to revolution," it declared, " the results of which threaten other states, ipso facto cease to be members of the European alliance, and remain excluded from it till their situation gives guarantees for legal order and stability . If, owing to such alterations, immediate danger threatens other states, the powers bind themselves, by England and the Concert . Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1818 .

peaceful means, or if need be by arms, to bring back the guilty

state into the bosom of the Great Alliance." This was, in effect, an attempt to apply the principle of the Carlsbad Decrees to all the world; and, had the attempt succeeded, all Europe would have been turned into a confederation on the model of that of Germany; for a political alliance, charged with the safeguarding of the territorial settlement defined by treaty, would have been substituted a central diet of the great powers, armed with undefined authority; and the sovereign independence of the nations would have been at an end . To any such principle, and therefore to the protocol in which it was embodied, Great Britain offered an uncompromising opposition . In vain Metternich urged upon Castlereagh that the protocol was but the logical conclusion drawn from premises to which he was already committed; for, if the alliance was to be effective in maintaining peace, it must interfere wherever and whenever peace should be threatened, and therefore to crush internal revolutions which could not but have an external result . The logic was perfect; the proposition that on which every "project of peace " must eventually break . Castlereagh's reply was, in brief, that Great Britain could never admit a principle which she would not in any circumstances allow to be applied in her own case . The absence of the signatures of Great Britain and France from the Troppau protocol marked the first rift in the alliance, a rift that was soon to develop into a breach . For the time, indeed, the crack was " papered over . Castle- reagh was prepared to leave Austria a free hand to deal with the risings in Naples and Piedmont, since she had treaty rights in the former case and her interests, as an Italian power, were threatened in both . Great Britain was even represented at the congress which reassembled at Laibach in January 1821, though Lord Stewart, the ambassador at Vienna, was not armed with full powers . Castlereagh had Core approved of the invitation sent to the king of Naples of L albach, f82t: to attend the congress, as implying " negotiation," an improvement on the dictatorial attitude of the protocol . But everything in the conferences tended still further to shatter the unstable foundations of the alliance . Capo d'Istria, as though the debates of Aix-la-Chapelle had never been, raised once more the spectre of the Universal Union " which Castlereagh believed he had laid for ever .

Metternich, anxious to prove to the Italian Liberals that the tsar was no longer their friend, welcomed the demonstration, and Prussia followed obediently in Austria's

wake . " It is clear," wrote Lord Stewart," that a Triple Understanding has been created which binds the parties to carry forward their own views in spite of any difference of opinion which may • exist between them and the two great constitutional governments." (See TROPPAU and LAIBACIS.) But the narrower " Holy Alliance " of the three autocratic monarchies, as opposed to the two western constitutional monarchies, was not in fact destined to take shape effectof till after the Paris revolution of 183o . Several factors revolution in slam. delayed the process, notably the' revolt of the Greeks against the Ottoman rule, and the Spanish question, which latter formed the main subject of discussion at the con- gress of Verona in 1822 . In the Eastern Question the interests of Austria and Great Britain were identical; both desired to maintain the integrity of Turkey; both saw that this integrity was in the greatest peril owing to the possible intervention of the Orthodox tsar in favour of his co-religionists in revolt; and both agreed that the best means of preventing such intervention was to bind the Russian emperor to the European concert by using his devotion to the principles of the Holy Alliance . At Verona, however, the Eastern question was entirely overshadowed by that of Spain, and in this matter the views of Great congress Britain were diametrically opposed to those of the ;2 rona, other powers of the alliance . She shared indeed with France and Austria the strenuous objection to the emperor Alexander's proposal to march 150,000 Russians into Piedmont in order to deal with Jacobinism whether in France or Spain; but she protested equally strenuously against the counter- proposal of France, which was ultimately adopted, that a French army should march into Spain to liberate the. king from his constitutional fetters in the name of Europe . George Canning, carrying on the tradition of Castlereagh, once more protested, through Wellington, as British plenipotentiary at the congress, against the whole principle of intervention; and when, in spite of the British protest, the other powers persisted, the breach of Great Britain with the continental alliance was proclaimed to all the world . When, on the 7th of April 1823, the French army under the duke of Angouleme crossed the Bidassoa, the great experiment of governing Europe through a central committee of the great powers was at an end . (See VERONA, CONGRESS OF; ALEXANDER I.; LONDONDERRY, ROBERT STEWART, 2nd marquess of; CANNING, GEORGE.) Henceforth, though the treaties survived, and with them the principle of the concert on which they were based, " Europe as a diplomatic conception tends to sink into the back- End ofthe ground and to be replaced by the old international "eonfede anarchy of the 18th century . To Canning this develop- ration of ment seemed wholly welcome . He applied to the Europe.'' rivalry of states the Liberal principle of free competition as the sole condition of healthy growth . " Villele is a minister of thirty years ago," he wrote to Bagot on the 3rd of January 1823, " no revolutionary scoundrel: but constitutionally hating England, as Choiseul and Vergennes used to hate us, and so things are getting back to a wholesome state again .

Every nation for itself, and

God for us all." But the essential difference between the rivalries of the 18th and 19th centuries was in the conception of the " nation." To Canning, as to the diplomatists of the congress of Vienna, " nation " was synonymous with " state, " and national boundaries were those defined by the treaties, which Canning was as bent on preserving as any of his reactionary contemporaries . The conception of the divine right of every nationality to readjust political frontiers to suit its own ideals was as foreign to him as to Metternich . Yet this principle of nationality, which was destined during the loth century to wreck the political structure consecrated at Vienna, and to leave to the succeeding age a host of unsolved and insoluble problems, found in Canning its earliest champion in the higher councils of Europe . The recognition of the independence of the South American republics and of the belligerent rights of the Greek insurgents were both in the first instance motived by the particular interests of Great Britain; but they were none the less hailed as concessions to the principles of nationality, to which they gave an impetus which was destined to continue till the face of Europe had been transformed . This in fact constitutes the main significance for Europe of the War of Greek Independence, which lasted from the first rising of the Greeks in the Motea in 1821 till the Europe signature of the treaty of London on the 7th of May and the 183 2 (see GREEK INDEPENDENCE, WAR OF; TURKEY: revolt of History) . Its actual outcome, so far as the political Greece. structure of Europe was concerned, was but to add an insignificant kingdom to the European states system . But its moral effect was immense . The sacrosanctity of the status quo had been violated, and violated with the active aid of three of the powers of the continental alliance: Russia, France and Great Britain . Metternich was right when he said that, in principle, there was no difference between the Greek insurgents and any other " rebels against legitimate authority," and the Liberals of all Europe, forced into inactivity by the Austrian police system, hailed in the Greeks the champions of their own cause . Philhelienisn, beyond its proper enthusiasm, served as a convenient veil for agitations that had little concern with Greece . Other forces making for political change were simultaneously at work . The peace `secured by the concert of the powers had given free play to the mechanical and industrial innovations Economic that heralded the marvellous economic revolution of progress; the coming age; wealth increased rapidly, and with it rise of the the influence and the ambition of the middle classes. middle The revolution of July 1830, which established the classes. bourgeois monarchy in France, marked their first triumph .

In First rift In the alliance . Principle of nationality . countries less economically advanced, e.g . Germany and Italy, the attempt to follow French example ended in failure; but the revolt of the Belgians, for reasons partly economic and partly national, against the domination of the Dutch, Revolu- resulted in the

establishment of the independent king- !ions of 18?0, dom of Belgium-the first actual breach in the terri- torial settlement of 1815 . In Great Britain the agitation of the disfranchised middle classes, which' seemed to threaten a violent revolution, ended in 1832 in the passing of the Reform Bill and their admission to political power . (See FRANCE; GERMANY; ITALY; BELGIUM; ENGLISH HISTORY.) The easy success of the revolutions in the west of Europe had been due, not to any reluctance of the reactionary powers to interfere on the basis of the old agreements, but to their preoccupation with the national' revolt in Poland (q.v.) . In view of this, and of the attitude of Great Britain, they had to recognize the title of Louis Philippe as- king of the French, merely stipulating that he should guarantee to maintain the treaties . In spite of the overthrow of the legitimate dynasty in France, and of the partition of the kingdom of the Netherlands, the territorial settlement of Vienna remained, after the revolution of 1830, substantially intact . Outside the limits of the treaties, however, fateful changes were in progress . These were deter-mined, broadly speaking, by the two main questions that dominated international politics between the years 1831 and 1841: (1) the antagonism between the western constitutional powers, France and Great Britain, and the eastern autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia; and (2) the crisis in the Eastern question resulting from the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, against the Porte . The strained relations between Great Britain and France, resulting from the French policy of aggression in the Spanish peninsula, which had more than once brought the Anglo.. two powers to the verge of war, had been eased before French entente." the fall of the government of Charles X . The Peril of a French hegemony over the vast colonial empire of Spain had been forestalled by Canning's recognition of the independence of the South American republics; the intrigues of France in favour of the partisans of Dom Miguel in Portugal had been checkmated by a politic breach, on behalf of the Portuguese Liberals, of the British principle of non-intervention, and finally the chief cause of offence had been removed, in 1827, by the withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Spain .

In the Greek question the two powers had acted cordially in concert; and this

good understanding even the French conquest of Algiers in 183o, which laid the foundations of the French empire in Africa, had not availed to shatter; for the eyes of the Tory ministry were still fixed on France as the potential focus of revolutionary propaganda, and any over-sea possessions she might acquire were, in Wellington's opinion, so many hostages for her good behaviour given to British sea-power . The results of the July revolution in Paris were accepted by Great Britain so soon as it became clear that Louis Philippe stood for peace and not for revolutionary aggression; the armed intervention of France in favour of the Belgians in August 1831 was stopped by the firm language of Palmerston; the French occupation of Ancona, as a countermove to Austrian aggressions in Italy, was accepted as " an incident of the balance of power "; and the intention of the king of the French to abide by the treaties, which became clearer with the consolidation of his power at home, paved the way for that entente between the two Liberal powers which lasted until 1840 . The cleavage between the fundamental principles of the two groups of autocratic and constitutional powers was not only The con- apparent in their general attitude towards constitustitutional tional and national movements, but affected also the v. the position taken up by them during the crisis of the autocratic Eastern question evoked by the revolt of Mehemet powers . Ali, pasha of Egypt, a crisis by which between 1839 and 1841 all other diplomatic issues were overshadowed . (See MEHEMET ALI.) During the Greek revolt the efforts of Austria had been directed to preventing a Russian attack upon Turkey; these efforts had failed, and Metternich's worst fears seemed to he realized when the Russo-Turkish campaigns of 1828--29 issued in the treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829) The and the apparently complete vassalage of the sultan to Eastern the tsar . But when, in 1832, Sultan Mahmud appealed question; in his despair to the emperor Nicholas to save him Mehemet from ruin at the hands of the Egyptian rebels, and, as the result, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) seemed to place definitely in the hands of Russia the keys of the Black Sea, it was left to France and Great Britain to give voice to the protest of Europe . Austria, alarmed by the revolutionary movements of 1830, accepted the fact of Russian preponderance at Constantinople, rather than risk a breach with the autocrat who was now the main pillar of the Holy Alliance . The emperor Nicholas, for his part, was equally prepared to surrender some of his ambitions in the East for the sake of the common cause, the more so since to Russian statesmen the maintenance of Turkey in a condition of weakness and dependence now seemed preferable to any attempt to break it up ..! The result of these dispositions was the convention of Munchen- i cboas onveof rt- gratz (September 18,1833) between Russia, Austria and Munchen . Prussia, by which the three powers undertook to gratz and guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman empire . In Be?3' rlin . the following month a secret convention was signed at 18 Berlin between the same powers (October 15), reaffirming the right of the powers to intervene in the internal affairs of !a friendly state at the request of its legitimate sovereign, a right with which no third power :would be allowed to interfere, such interference to be regarded by the throe powers as an act of hostility directed against all of them .

This reconstitution of the " Holy Alliance " on a narrower basis was the work of the emperor Nicholas, whose masterful

personality had by this time quite overshadowed the The Tsar influence of Metternich in the councils of the autocratic Nicholas i powers . There was no formal breach of the Grand and Pal Alliance; the " treaties " remained in force; but the merston . French revolution of 1830 had produced a practical disruption which was every day accentuated by the attitude of the British government under the influence of Palmerston . For Palmerston had now become f` the firebrand of Europe," openly proclaiming his contempt for international law and equally openly posing as the protector of " oppressed nationalities." - " If these two powers (France and England)," wrote the tsar to King Frederick William of Prussia, " have the courage to profess lrthdly rebellion and the overturn of all stability, we ought to have the right and the courage to support Divine right." This deep cleavage of principles was immediately exhibited in the attitude of the powers towards the troubles in the Spanish peninsula . In September 1833 Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, and, under the Pragmatic Sanction, his daughter Isabella succeeded under the - regency of Queen Christina; in July, Dom Miguel, the Affairs n Spain and absolutist pretender to, the throne of Portugal, had- Portugal. made himself master of Lisbon, In Spain Don Carlos ,Quadruple Ferdinand's brother, claimed thecrownas the legitimate of 1834° heir, and began the long agony of the Carlist wars; - in Portugal: the constitutionalists upheld in arms the rights df Queen Maria da Gloria (see SPAIN and PORTUGAL) . Carlists and Miguelists, making common cause, had the moral support of the allies of Mtmchengratz; while :France and Great Britain took the side of the Liberals . = A formal alliance between the two western powers, proposed by Talleyrand, was indeed refused by Palmerston, who had no wish to commit Great Britain to an irrevocable breach with Austria and Russia, and was suspicious of the ambitions of France in Spain; but ultimately a triple alliance between Great Britain, Spain and Portugal-with the object of restoring order in the peninsula—was converted, under pressure from the French government, into the Quadruple Alliance of the 22nd of April 1834 . The entente implied by this formal instrument was, however, more apparent than real . When; in the spring of 1835, Queen Christina applied to the Allies for help against a renewed Carlist rising, Palmerston's suspicions were again aroused by the somewhat naive suggestion of Thiers that France should once more intervene as in 1823, a suggestion that was firmly rejected . Palmerston's counter-proposal of an English Nicholas is expedition met with as little favour in Paris . The and Great Britain . Anglo-French entente was proving but a " cardboard alliance," as Wellington called it; and the emperor Nicholas, to whom the existence of Louis Philippe as king of the French was at once a sacrilege and a menace, began with a good hope to work for its destruction .

The fears roused by the Reform Act of 1832 had been belied by its results; the conservative

temper of the British electorate had restored to Great Britain the prestige of a legitimate power; and the pledge of the tsar's renewed confidence and goodwill was the visit of the cesarevich (afterwards the emperor Alexander II.) to the English court in Breach of 1839 . This was not without its effect on the public Anglo- sentiment; but the triumph of the tsar's diplomacy French was due to fresh complications in the Eastern question, "entente" due to the renewed effort of Sultan Mahmud to crush 1 the hated viceroy of Egypt . These events will be found outlined in the article MEHEMET ALL Here it will suffice to say that the convention of London of the 15th of July 184o, signed by Great Britain, Austria, Prussia and Russia without calling France into counsel, marked the definite breach of the Anglo-French entente, a breach which was but imperfectly healed by the Straits' Convention signed by all the powers on the 13th of July 1841 . The Straits' Convention was hailed by Count Nesselrode, the Russian foreign secretary, as having re-established " the federa- Great tive system of the European states on its old basis." Britain This was true, in so far as it created yet another and precedent for the concerted action of the European France. powers, and once more consecrated the right of " Europe " to decide in common on questions of first-rate inter-national importance . But the divergence of interests and principles within the concert were too great to be healed by the I national movement, declared war against Austria . Against a settlement of a single issue, however important, and this diver- movement so widespread and apparently inspired by a common gence increased as events moved towards the revolutionary purpose the governments were powerless . The collapse of the outbreaks of 1848 . When, in 1846, the independent republic Austrian administration, of which the inherent rottenness was now of Cracow was suppressed by agreement of the three autocratic revealed, involved that of those reactionary powers which had powers, on the ground that it had become a dangerous centre of leaned upon it . One by one they accepted what seemed to be revolutionary agitation, it was Great Britain and France that the inevitable; even Pope Pius IX. sent troops to fight under protested against an arbitrary infraction of the treaties by the I the banner of St Peter for the Italian cause; while in Berlin very governments which had laid the greatest stress upon their Frederick William IV., wrapped in the gold and black colours of sanctity . The entente between the two Liberal powers had been I imperial Germany, posed as the leader of " the glorious German patched up after the closure of the Egyptian Question; it was revolution." When, on the 18th of May, the parliament of cemented by visits of Queen Victoria and the prince consort to United Germany was opened at Frankfort, it seemed as though the Chateau d'Eu (1843 and 1845), and of King Louis Philippe pan-German dreams were on the threshold of realization; while to Windsor (1844); and it survived, in spite of several causes of in Italy, early in the same month, Lombardy, Modena, Parma friction, notably the crisis in Morocco (q.v.), until 1846, when the affair of the Spanish Marriages brought it to a somewhat dramatic conclusion . The attempt to secure the succession to the Spanish throne for his descendants by pressing on the marriage of the duke of Montpensier with the infanta Luisa, before that of The "Feb- his authority was based . In 1847 he joined with the ruary Re- three autocratic powers in supporting the clerical and volution," reactionary Sonderbund in Switzerland, in defiance of 1848. the protests of Great Britain and the attitude of the majority of Frenchmen .

Wheh, in February 1848, the revolution

broke out in Paris, the bourgeois monarchy, utterly discredited, fell without a struggle (see FRANCE and Louis PHILIPPE) . The revolution in Paris was not the cause of the political upheaval which in the year 1848 convulsed Europe from Ireland to the banks of the Danube; it had indeed been pre- Revolution ceded by the triumph of Liberalism in Switzerland, of 1848 by successful revolutions in Naples and Palermo, and outside by the grant of a constitution in Piedmont; but France. flaming up as it were in the revolutionary centre of Europe, it acted as the beacon signal for the simultaneous outbreak of movements which, though long prepared, might but for this have been detached and spasmodic . It was this simultaneity which gave to the revolutions of 1848 their European character and their formidable force . They were the outcome of various, dissimilar and sometimes contradictory impulses—political, social, racial . In France the issue resolved itself into a struggle between the new working-class ideal of Socialism and the bourgeois ideal of the great Revolution; in England the Chartist movement presented, in a less degree, the same character; in Germany, in theAustrian empire, in Italy, on the other hand, the dominant motives were constitutional and nationalist, and of these two the latter became in the end the determining factor . The events of the different revolutions are described elsewhere (see FRANCE; AUSTRIA; GERMANY; HUNGARY; ITALY) . From the point of view of Europe such unity as they possessed was due to their being, so far as Central Europe was concerned, directed against the system of " stability " associated with the name of Metternich . In hatred of this system German, Czech, Magyar, and Italian were united; Kossuth's great speech of the 3rd of March echoed far beyond the frontiers of Hungary; the fall of Metternich (March x3) was a victory, not only for the populace of Vienna, but for all the peoples and races which had worn the Austrian fetters . It was the signal for revolutions in Hungary (the passing of the " March Laws "), in Bohemia, in Prussia (March 15), in Milan; on the 23rd of March, Charles Albert of Sardinia, placing himself at the head of the Italian " Spanish the young queen Isabella had been proved to be fruitful resisting power of the Habsburg monarchy, the Afar- in children, was on the part of Louis Philippe more I strength of which lay in the traditional loyalty of the causes of Naze-" than a breach of faith with Great Britain (how deeply army and the traditional policy of balancing race othe f thei failure it was resented may be learnt from Queen Victoria's letters); against race within the empire . The triumph of revoluit was a breach of faith with the revolution that had made him democracy in Germany was made possible only by the tionary king . Since 184o, indeed, the whole tendency of the king's temporary collapse of the Habsburg power, a collapse move-meats . policy had been to revert to the traditional standpoint of the due to the universality and apparent unanimity of the Bourbons; internally, " resistance " to the growing claims of onslaught upon it .

But it was soon clear that the unanimity was the democracy; externally, dynastic ambition . But in en- i more apparent than real . The victory of the democratic forces had deavouring to win the goodwill of the reactionary powers he only been too easy, too seemingly overwhelming; the establishment succeeded in losing that of the classes of his own

people on which of the constitutional principle in the main centres of autocracy seemed to make common action against the powers of reaction of secondary importance, and free play was allowed to the racial and national antagonisms that had been present from the first . The battle of German, as well as of Italian, liberty was being fought out on the plains of Lombardy; yet the German democrats, whether in Vienna or Frankfort, hailed the victories of the veteran Radetzky as triumphs of Germanism . In Bohemia the and Piacenza declared by plebiscites for incorporation in the north Italian kingdom, Venice following suit on the 4th of June . A profound modification of the European states system seemed inevitable . That, in the event, the revolutions of 1848 left the territorial settlement of Vienna intact, was due in the main to the marvellous revolution was wrecked on the rivalry of German and Czech; and when the Hungarians drew the sword against Austria, the imperial government was reinforced by the hatred of the southern Slays for their Magyar task-masters . Thus, from the chaos of warring races, the old order began slowly to reappear . So early as the 15th of June 1848 Prince Victory of Windischgratz had restored order in Prague and re-the con- ceived the thanks of the Frankfort parliament; on servative the 25th of July Radetzky's victory at Custozza set forces. free the imperialist army in Italy; on the 4th of September Jellachich, ban of Croatia, invaded Hungary in the name of the united empire; on the 1st of November Windischgratz entered democratic Vienna . The alliance of the army and the Slav races had won the victory over German democracy . The combating of Hungarian nationalism proved a longer and a harder task; but the Austrian victory of Kapolna (February 26-27, 1849) encouraged Schwarzenberg to dissolve the rump of the Reichsrath at Kremsier and proclaim a new constitution for the whole empire, including Hungary . The Magyar victories that followed issued in the. proclamation, on the 14th of April, of the independence of Hungary .

But though the Austrian arms had not been strong enough to crush the Hungarian revolt, they had proved at least the vitality of the conservative principle . The emperor Nicholas I. of Russia had watched in disgusted silence the weak spirit of concession with which the revolutions had been everywhere met; so long as the sovereigns seemed to forget their divine

mission he had held rigorously aloof, and had only broken silence to congratulate Windischgratz on his capture of Vienna and Schwarzenberg on his reassertion of vigorous principles . Now, however, that Divine Right was in arms against the forces of disorder, he was prepared to listen to the prayer of the emperor Francis Joseph for assistance against the Hungarian rebels . The engagements of 1833 were remembered; and in the brotherly spirit of the Holy Alliance, Hungary was subdued by Russian armies and handed over, without quid pro quo, to her legitimate king . Gorgei's capitulation of V ilagos (August 14, 1849) cleared the ground for the complete restoration of the system destroyed by the March revolutions of the year before . The refusal of Frederick William IV. of Prussia to accept the imperial crown (April 21, 1849) had already advertised the failure of the constitutional and unionist movement in Germany; and Prussia, her military prestige re-stored, stood once more face to face with Austria in rivalry for the hegemony of Germany . In the diplomatic contest that followed Prussia was worsted, her claims to an independent supremacy in the north were defeated, and the convention of Olmutz (November 29, 1850) restored the status quo of the Confederation as established in 1815 . Within three years of the great upheaval of 1848 the forces of revolution seemed everywhere to have been subdued, the states system of Europe to have been re-established on the Napoleon basis of the treaties of Vienna . In reality, however, lu. and Europe. this restoration was only on the surface; the cracks in the structure of the European system had—to use Bismarck's phrase applied to another occasion—only been " papered over "; and soon ominous rents revealed the fact that the forces that had threatened it with sudden ruin were still at work . One fateful breach in the treaties had, indeed, been accepted as beyond repair; when the dust of the revolutionary turmoil was at length laid a Bonaparte was once more firmly seated on the throne of France . The emperor Nicholas, watching from the calm of Russia, had realized all that the recognition of this fact would involve; he had proposed to set in motion the somewhat rusty machinery of the Grand Alliance, but the other autocratic powers were in no case to support a legitimist crusade, and when Napoleon in 1852 assumed the title of emperor, all Europe recognized his right to do so, even Nicholas being fain to content himself with refusing to treat the parvenu monarch as his " brother," and to admit his style of " third " Napoleon, which seemed to imply a dynastic claim . Napoleon, indeed, was accepted by the powers, as he was wel-coined by the French people, as the " saviour of society " from the newly revealed perils of the social revolution .

For new and ominous forces had made their

appearance since the revolution of 183o had established the middle classes in power . The industrial development had proceeded in the west of Europe with astonishing rapidity, with its resulting concentra- tion of vast populations in factories and factory cities; Rise of r socialism . and this " proletariat," excluded from any voice in the government, and exposed in accordance with the prevailing economic theories of doctrinaire Liberalism to the horrors of unrestricted competition, had begun to organize itself in a movement, of which the catchword was " the right to work " and the banner the red flag of the socialist commune . The reign of Charles X. had been the reductio ad absurdum of the principle of legitimacy; that of Louis Philippe had discredited for ever government based solely on the bourgeoisie; the socialistic experiments of 1848 in Paris had collapsed amid the anarchy and bloodshed of the June days . At this opportune moment Louis Napoleon Bonaparte proclaimed to the French people the " Napoleonic Idea " as conceived by " The himself . The great Napoleon had been the incarnation idea" onic of the Revolution, had " sprung armed from the Revolution, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter "; he had ruled because to him the people, by whom the Revolution had been made, had delegated the duty of representing, protecting and guiding it . Of this idea Louis Napoleon conceived himself to be the heir; and when by a double plebiscite the French nation had established him in supreme power, first as president for life (1851), then as emperor (1852), he was able to claim that he represented the people in a far more immediate sense than could be asserted of the chance majority of any representative assembly . It was clear that, sooner or later, Napoleon III. would prove a disturbing force in Europe . His title to rule was that he represented France; it followed therefore that he must be Bconomio hostile to " the treaties," by which the traditional revolu- aspirations of France, e.g. for her " natural boundaries " tion In of Rhine, Alps and Pyrenees, were restrained . He Europe• reigned as " emperor of the French "; it followed that he represented that principle of nationality which the treaties ignored . He could not afford—as Metternich had said of Ferdinand of Naples—" to treat his throne as an arm-chair "; and any activity he might display would be almost certainly at the expense of the established order . At the outset, indeed, it was his policy to pose as its custodian .

To conciliate the French clericals he supported the pope against the Italian Liberals; but otherwise he proclaimed aloud his devotion to the arts of peace . A

period of rapid material expansion succeeded the unrest of the revolutionary years; engineers and men of science were quickly producing a change in all the material conditions of life, greater than could have been effected by any political revolution; especially the face of Europe was gradually being covered with a network of railways, which it was hoped would draw the European nations not only materially but morally closer together . The first universal exhibition, opened under the auspices of the prince consort at London in 1851, was intended to advertise and consecrate the dawn of a new era of international peace and goodwill . The Crystal Palace at Sydenham, once hailed as the " bright Koh-i-nur of the West," remains the dismal monument of a hope so soon to be belied by the hard logic of events . For no period since 1815 has been so occupied with wars and the rumours of war as the twenty years that followed the opening of this great temple of peace . One question, that of the ultimate destination of the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, which threatened the tranquillity of the West, was temporarily settled by the conference of London in 1852 (see SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN QUESTION) . The But about the same time anxious watchers noticed crlmeaa War . on the political horizon in the East a cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, that threatened a serious storm . At first this was no more than a quarrel between Greek and Latin monks about the custody of certain holy places and things in Palestine . Prussia and Austria . Convention of Olm atz, 1850 . It soon, however, became clear that behind these insignificant combatants loomed the figures of the emperors of Russia and France .

The motives that induced Napoleon to take up the cause of the rights of the Latin

church in this matter were partly political, partly personal . He resented the tsar's attitude towards himself; he wished to gain the firm support of the clergy for his throne; he desired to win prestige for himself and his dynasty by reasserting the traditional influence of France in the Ottoman empire .