CHAPTER II
THE POWERS AND THE CITIZEN KING
In 1830 England was still suffering acutely from the financial crisis of five years before. The losses of the capitalists entailed distress upon the working classes in the shape of unemployment and diminished wages. The misery of the people led to the commission of acts of violence and incendiarism upon a scale unparalleled in the recent history of England. The advocates of parliamentary reform drew their best arguments, in support of their cause, from the wretched condition of the country. The elections, rendered necessary by the death of George IV., began in the very week which saw France in the throes of her revolution. By the Opposition the victory of the Parisians was acclaimed enthusiastically as the triumph of a neighbouring people over despotism and aristocratic privilege. The downfall of Polignac was celebrated as a crushing blow to Wellington. The belief that the Duke had connived at, if not directly inspired, the French King’s attempted coup d’état, was not confined to ignorant people, but was professed by the leaders of the Whig party.[12] Whilst this supposed connection of Wellington with Polignac increased the voting power of the Opposition, Tory patrons of rotten boroughs, incensed at his Catholic policy, withheld from him their support. The Duke returned from the elections with a diminished majority, and one, moreover, which, such as it was, in no way represented the real opinion of the country.
Wellington had been chiefly instrumental in effecting the restoration of the Bourbons after Waterloo. The news of their expulsion could not, under these circumstances, fail to cause him some personal regret. But, in addition, he was too well acquainted with French affairs not to be aware that the triumph of the democratic party was a grave menace to the peace of Europe. On the other hand, however, far from being, as was supposed, upon confidential terms with Polignac, the French expedition to Algiers had strained seriously the official relations which alone subsisted between them. But any reluctance, which he and his colleagues might have entertained, to recognizing the new régime in France, had to give way before the popular enthusiasm which the revolution called forth throughout England. The Duke, accordingly, lost no time in advising the King to acknowledge Louis Philippe. It was a policy, he maintained, which not only offered the best prospect of preserving peace, but which would meet with the approval of all the great Powers.[13] Consequently, when on August 22 General Baudrand arrived in London, bringing with him a letter from Louis Philippe to William IV., he was accorded a good reception in ministerial circles. Although he fancied he could detect a little coldness in Wellington’s manner, his mission achieved a complete success. After a stay of about a week in London he returned to Paris, taking back with him King William’s answer together with a box ornamented with a portrait of that monarch set in diamonds.[14] Meanwhile, on August 18, Charles X. and the members of his family had arrived at Spithead on board The Great Britain, the American vessel chartered by the French government to convey them to England. The state of public feeling made it inadvisable that they should proceed to London or even land at Portsmouth, and they were, in consequence, taken, a few days later, by steamer to Lulworth Castle, in Dorsetshire, which had been prepared for their reception. The mob which had cheered exultingly as Castlereagh’s body was borne through the streets to its last resting-place at Westminster Abbey, which, two years later, was to threaten Wellington with violence on the anniversary of Waterloo, would have shown scant respect for the misfortunes of the fallen King.
Ever since the days of her crowning disaster at Wagram, Metternich had directed the foreign policy of Austria. Clement Wenceslas von Metternich, Chancellor of the Court and of the State, was descended from a family of counts of the empire and was born at Coblentz in 1773. His predecessors in office, old Kaunitz, the minister of Maria Theresa, Thugut, Cobenyl, and Stadion, had in vain attempted to cope with republican and imperial France. Without doubt, Metternich in the final struggle with Bonaparte was assisted by circumstances not of his own creation, nevertheless he unquestionably proved himself, on many occasions, a crafty, wary adversary, who could await his opportunity patiently. The flattery which was lavished upon him at the peace and the prominent part which he was enabled to play in the great territorial settlement at Vienna stimulated greatly his natural vanity and presumption. In addition, as he grew older, he began to indulge more and more in long philosophical disquisitions upon every kind of political subject. But under his pedantic manner, he retained always his alert resourcefulness and shrewd common sense. In the words of Sir Frederick Lamb, who had transacted much business with him, “he was far too practical a man to regulate his conduct by his doctrines, and far too ingenious a one to be at a loss for a doctrine to cover his conduct.”[15]
Without doubt, Metternich was a man of aristocratic and conservative instincts, but, had he been differently disposed, the conditions of the Empire must have rendered very difficult the adoption of a Liberal policy. At the Congress of Vienna Austria had renounced all claim to her former possessions in the Low Countries and in Western Germany, and had withdrawn to the south and south-east to exercise an uneasy dominion over Slavs and Italians. Progress on national lines was hardly possible in an empire thus constituted, and circumstances contributed to facilitate the imposition of a strictly conservative system. The Liberal impulse, to which the War of Liberation had given birth in Prussia, had no counterpart in Austria, nor had Francis II., like Frederick William III., even in his darkest days, promised constitutional reforms. At the peace, accordingly, Austria reverted uncomplainingly to her old absolutist traditions.
In Italy Bonaparte had encouraged deliberately a spirit of nationality. But the patriotic hopes, which he had raised, were extinguished at the Congress of Vienna. Italy, Metternich decreed, was to be henceforward merely “a geographical expression.” By the settlement of 1815 Austria acquired actually the provinces of Lombardy and Venetia, but her influence extended far beyond these districts. Austrian princes ruled over the Duchies of Tuscany, Modena and Parma. Treaties which provided that Piacenza, Commachio and Ferrara should be garrisoned by Austrian troops gave her military control of the valley of the Po. Tuscany was forbidden to make either peace or war without her consent, and the King of Naples was pledged to introduce no constitutional changes, other than those sanctioned in the Austrian dominions.
In the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom, as it was termed, it was Metternich’s policy to make the Lombards “forget that they were Italians.” The Austrian code of laws was introduced without regard to native customs and prejudices. The civil service was composed almost exclusively of Germans, and the most trifling administrative questions had to be referred to Vienna.[16] The stagnation engendered by this system could not fail to have a demoralizing effect. At Venice two-fifths of the population were in receipt of charitable relief, the middle classes were without enterprise, the aristocracy fawned upon the Austrians. On the other hand, in Lombardy and Venetia there were few monks and a comparatively good system of popular education existed. The people, moreover, enjoyed equality before the law which, except in political cases, was justly administered. But as in all Italian States, the police were arbitrary and interfering and the censorship of the press was enforced rigidly.
The heterogeneous composition of the Austrian Empire, which demanded a strictly conservative policy at home, prescribed no less urgently the preservation of peaceful relations abroad. Since the conclusion of the great war Metternich’s foreign policy had had no other object than the maintenance of the status quo, by the strict observation of existing treaties. The revolutionary spirit was the most serious danger to the settlement of 1815. Bonaparte might be dead or a prisoner at St. Helena, but Metternich was under no illusion that the peril had passed away for ever. The revolutionary monster still survived and required ceaseless watching. Only, he conceived, by a European Confederation, ruled over by a council of the Great Powers, could complete security be obtained against the common enemy of all established governments. Metternich’s combination of the Powers “for the maintenance of everything lawfully existing,”[17] which has been held up to execration under the name of the Holy Alliance, was an adaptation to practical politics of the fantastic scheme, which Alexander had propounded, on September 26, 1815, after a