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A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)

by Edwin Emerson · English · Gutenberg #26901 · 1,049,729 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year. Volume 2 (of 3)

Author: Edwin Emerson


        
Release date: October 12, 2008 [eBook #26901]

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Paul Dring and the Online
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HISTORY OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY, YEAR BY YEAR. VOLUME 2 (OF 3) ***




Produced by Audrey Longhurst, Paul Dring and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net









  [Illustration: THE FIRST STEAM RAILWAY
    Painted by Edward L Henry, N.A.
    Copyright by C. Klackner]




  A HISTORY OF
  THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
  YEAR BY YEAR

  BY

  EDWIN EMERSON, Jr.

  Member of the American Historical Association, New York
  Historical Society, Franklin Institute of Philadelphia,
  Honorary Member of the Royal Philo-Historical Society
  of Bavaria, etc., etc.

  WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
  GEORG GOTTFRIED GERVINUS

  ILLUSTRATED WITH SIXTEEN COLORED PLATES AND
  THIRTY-TWO FULL-PAGE, HALF-TONE CUTS
  AND TWO MAPS

  _IN THREE VOLUMES--VOLUME TWO_

  [Illustration]

  NEW YORK

  P.F. COLLIER AND SON

  MCMII




  COPYRIGHT, 1900

  By EDWIN EMERSON, Jr.

  [Illustration]




  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  VOLUME TWO


  FULL PAGES IN COLOR

  THE FIRST STEAM RAILWAY. Painted by Edward L. Henry      _Frontispiece_

  BALAKLAVA. Painted by Elizabeth Thompson (Lady Butler)

  SOLFERINO. Painted by E. Meissonier

  LAST MOMENTS OF MAXIMILIAN. Painted by J. Paul Laurens


  FULL PAGES IN BLACK AND WHITE

  AMERICAN INVENTORS. Painted by C. Schussele

  THE KING OF ROME. Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence

  LORD BYRON. Painted by Maurin

  BEETHOVEN AND HIS ADMIRERS. Painted by A. Grafle

  QUEEN VICTORIA TAKING THE OATH. Painted by Sir George Hayter

  LORD TENNYSON. Painted by Frederic Sandys

  WASHINGTON IRVING AND HIS FRIENDS. Painted by Daniel Huntington

  THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN. Painted by Gustave Dore

  WAGNER AND LISZT. Painted by W. Beckmann

  OPENING OF THE OPERA. Painted by Edouard Detaille

  EXECUTION OF SEPOY REBELS. Painted by Verestchagin

  THE EMPEROR OF CHINA RECEIVING THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS.




1816


[Sidenote: Parliamentary rule in France]

[Sidenote: Revival of French letters]

An era of peace and reconstruction had begun. After a generation of war and
turmoil France was started on her new career of parliamentary government.
The brief period of retaliation ended with the so-called amnesty act of
January, which condemned Napoleon and all his relatives to perpetual exile.
The Chambers now entered into a prolonged discussion of the propositions
for a new election law. The Ministry was headed by the Duc de Richelieu,
who had taken the place of Talleyrand and Fouche. The latter was compelled
to leave France forever. Marshal Gouvion St. Cyr, who succeeded Davoust,
reorganized the army on a permanent footing of military equality which
satisfied even Napoleon's veterans. In the Chambers, the Comte d'Artois
represented the ultra-royalist right wing, while the left was brilliantly
led by Lafayette, Manuel, and Benjamin Constant. Guizot, during the same
year, for the first time ascended the tribune as spokesman of the moderate
party--the so-called Doctrinaires. Chateaubriand so offended the king by
his book "La Monarchie selon la Charte" that his name was crossed from the
list of the Council of State. Yet he remained the foremost man of letters
in France.

[Sidenote: Beranger]

Beranger was the foremost lyric poet. A typical song by him is that
rendered by Thackeray:

  With pensive eyes the little room I view,
    Where, in my youth, I weathered it so long;
  With a wild mistress, a stanch friend or two,
    And a light heart still breaking into song:
  Making a mock of life, and all its cares,
    Rich in the glory of my rising sun,
  Lightly I vaulted up four pair of stairs,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  Yes; 'tis a garret--let him know't who will--
    There was my bed--full hard it was and small;
  My table there--and I decipher still
    Half a lame couplet charcoaled on the wall.
  Ye joys, that Time hath swept with him away,
    Come to mine eyes, ye dreams of love and fun;
  For you I pawned my watch how many a day,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  And see my little Lizette, first of all;
    She comes with pouting lips and sparkling eyes;
  Behold, how roguishly she pins her shawl
    Across the narrow easement, curtain-wise;
  Now by the bed her petticoat glides down,
    And when did woman look the worse in none?
  I have heard since who paid for many a gown,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  One jolly evening, when my friends and I
    Made happy music with our songs and cheers,
  A shout of triumph mounted up thus high,
    And distant cannon opened on our ears:
  We rise,--we join in the triumphant strain,--
    Napoleon conquers--Austerlitz is won--
  Tyrants shall never tread us down again,
    In the brave days when I was twenty-one.

  Let us be gone--the place is sad and strange--
    How far, far off, these happy times appear;
  All that I have to live I'd gladly change
    For one such month as I have wasted here--
  To draw long dreams of beauty, love, and power,
    From founts of hope that never will outrun,
  And drink all life's quintessence in an hour,
    Give me the days when I was twenty-one!

It was the period of a new revival for French literature.

[Sidenote: Reaction in southern Europe]

In the other Latin countries, Spain, Portugal and Italy, the restoration of
the old monarchies was not attended by like beneficent results. In Spain,
the re-establishment of the Inquisition stifled free thought and free
speech to such a degree that some of the most progressive Spaniards
emigrated to the revolted Spanish dependencies in America. The return of
Bourbon rule in Naples and Sicily was made odious by a general suppression
of Freemasons and kindred secret societies.

[Sidenote: Metternich's influence]

[Sidenote: German Confederation established]

[Sidenote: The Frankfort Diet]

In the German States, similar measures of persecution were invoked against
the student societies at the universities. The University of Erfurt was
suspended. The Duke of Hesse, who had gained early notoriety by renting his
subjects to foreign armies, now revived corporal punishment together with
the stocks and other feudal institutions. In Wurtemberg serfdom was
re-established. Throughout Germany the reactionary suggestions of Prince
Metternich were carried into effect. A good opportunity for Metternich to
assert his ascendency was presented by the first session of the new German
Diet. Late in the year the delegates from all the States of the New
Germanic Confederation met at Frankfort, Austria holding the permanent
presidency. Count Buol von Schauenstein opened the Diet with a solemn
address, which fell flat. First of all, it was settled that Hesse would
have to cede a large part of Westphalia to Prussia. Next, the title of the
Duke of Cambridge to rule as Regent in Hanover was fully recognized. In
all resolutions relating to fundamental laws, the organic regulations of
the Confederation, the _jura singulorum_ and matters of religion, unanimity
was required. All the members of the Confederation bound themselves neither
to enter into war nor into any foreign alliance against the Confederation
or any of its members. The thirteenth article declared, "Each of the
confederated States will grant a constitution to the people." The sixteenth
placed all Christian sects on an equality. The eighteenth granted freedom
of settlement within the Confederation, and promised "uniformity of
regulation concerning the liberty of the press." The fortresses of
Luxemburg, Mainz and Landau were declared common property and occupied in
common by their troops. A fourth fortress was to be raised on the Upper
Rhine with twenty millions of the French contribution money. This was never
done. For future sessions of the Diet the votes were so regulated that the
eleven States of first rank alone held a full vote, the secondary States
merely holding a half or a fourth of a vote, as, for instance, all the
Saxon duchies collectively, one vote; Brunswick and Nassau, one; the two
Mecklenburgs, one; Oldenburg, Anhalt, and Schwartzburg, one; the petty
princes of Hohenzollern, Lichtenstein, Reuss, Lippe, and Waldeck, one; all
the free towns, one; forming altogether seventeen votes. In constitutional
questions the six States of the highest rank were to have each four votes;
the next five States each three; Brunswick, Schwerin, and Nassau, each two;
and all the remaining princes each, one vote. This arrangement, as it
turned out, proved fruitful of endless trouble.

[Sidenote: Unfair representation]

Austria and Prussia at that time contained forty-two million inhabitants;
the rest of Germany merely twelve million. The power of the two predominant
States, therefore, really were in proportion to that of the rest of Germany
as seven to two, whereas their votes in the Diet stood merely as two to
seventeen, and in the plenary assembly as two to fifteen.

[Sidenote: Prussia predominant]

Though Prussia had lost Hanover and East Friesland, she had received
sufficient compensation still--thanks to Hardenberg's diplomacy--to start
her on her future career as the predominant German State. Incorporated with
the Prussian provinces now were half of Saxony, the Grandduchy of Posen, a
portion of Westphalia, nearly all of the Lower Rhine region from Mainz to
Aix-la-Chapelle, and Swedish Pomerania, for which Prussia paid some eight
million thalers by way of indemnity.

[Sidenote: Restoration of the Netherlands]

In Holland, the new Stadtholder, Prince William Frederick of Orange-Nassau,
having incorporated Belgium as an integral part of the kingdom of the
Netherlands, set himself to nullify the French racial traits of his Belgian
subjects. A suggestion of future strife on this score could already be
found in Van der Palm's memorial on "The Restoration of the Netherlands,"
published during this year.

[Sidenote: England's commanding position]

[Sidenote: Industrial depression]

[Sidenote: Art and Letters]

The final settlement of Napoleon's great upheaval of Europe left England
feverish and exhausted. The prolonged financial strain of twenty years of
war had saddled Great Britain with a national debt of eight hundred million
pounds. Of material gain there was little to show but the acquisition of
Ceylon and the Cape of Good Hope from the Dutch; of the former French
colony of Mauritius, and of a few West Indian islands. The continued
possession of the Rock of Gibraltar, and of Malta, the old stronghold of
the Knights of Malta, together with the British protectorate over the Ionic
Isles, assured to England her commanding position in the Mediterranean. At
home the pressure of the heavy taxes required to meet the financial
legacies of the war was imbittered by the general distress of the country.
The new tax on the importation of grains resulted in famine prices.
Corresponding tariff restrictions abroad kept British markets overstocked
with goods. Mills and factories had to be shut down, while at the same time
the labor market was glutted with several hundred thousand discharged
sailors and soldiers. The starving working people grew bitter in their
opposition to new labor-saving devices. Thus the appearance of the first
steamship on the Thames and of the earliest ships constructed of iron,
followed shortly by Sir Francis Reynold's invention of an electric
clock-work telegraph and by James Watt's introduction of stereo plates in
book-printing, heightened this feeling. The resentment of laboring men
found expression in riotous meetings at Manchester, Littleport and
Nottingham. The movement spread to London. A great labor meeting was held
there on the Spa fields. The favorite newspaper of the workingmen,
Cobbett's radical "Two Penny Register," rivalled the London "Times" in
power. In Parliament the leaders of the radical opposition grew ever more
importunate. Not until the end of the year did matters mend. The most
comforting sign of better times was a partial resumption of specie payments
by the Bank of England, followed shortly by the opening of the first
Savings Bank in London. Other memorable events of the year were the
acquisition of the famous Elgin marbles from the Parthenon in Athens,
celebrated in Keats's sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles," and the
publication of Shelley's long poem "Alastor," and Leigh Hunt's "Story of
Rimini." A diplomatic setback pregnant with future trouble was the
dismissal of Lord Amherst, the British Ambassador at Pekin, for refusing to
kow-tow to the Emperor of China.

[Sidenote: Depression in America]

[Sidenote: Financial relief measures]

[Sidenote: Tariff _vs._ Free Trade]

[Sidenote: Changes in New England]

In America the depression of commerce and industry resulting from the war
with England continued unabated. To relieve the situation, the Secretary of
the Treasury, A.J. Dallas, proposed as a measure of relief the chartering
of a new national bank with increased capital and enlarged powers and the
readjustment of the tariff by the imposition of higher duties. The bank was
chartered for twenty-one years with a capital of $35,000,000, a portion of
the stock to be owned by the government and the institution to have in its
management five government directors in a board of twenty-five. The tariff
policy of Madison was sustained by the Southern party and opposed by the
Federalists, especially in New England. Thus it became more a question of
sectional interests than of abstract political economy. The capital of New
England was invested in shipping, so that the exclusion of articles of
foreign production was bound to injure, by a high tariff, New England's
carrying trade. On its part, the South sought to establish a home market
for its cotton--almost the only staple of the Gulf States. Efforts were
made to encourage the domestic manufacture of those coarse fabrics which
were indispensable in a slave-holding region. The question thus grew into a
struggle between slave labor and free trade. The free-trade party was led
by Daniel Webster, and the tariff party by Calhoun. During the first year
of the new tariff the value of foreign imports fell off about thirty-two
per cent. In the adjustment of capital and trade to an enforced industrial
policy, the American people passed through a commercial crisis which
paralyzed the flourishing sea-ports of the New England coast. Newburyport,
Salem, Plymouth, New London, Newport, and intermediate places sank from
lucrative commercial centres into insignificant towns. Manchester, Lowell,
Fall River, Pawtucket, Waterbury and other New England cities on the other
hand became great manufacturing places.

The Fourteenth American Congress, under the leadership of Clay, imposed a
protective tariff of about twenty-five per cent on imported cotton and
woollen goods, with specific duties on coal and iron. The average duties on
imports amounted almost to prohibition. Late in the year Indiana was
admitted as the nineteenth State.

[Sidenote: War with Florida Indians]

The tranquillity of the end of Madison's administration was broken by new
troubles with the southern Indians. General Jackson by his impulsive
manner of dealing with the Indians of Florida nearly forced the United
States into a war with Spain and England. The Indians had reason to
complain of the injustice that had marked their treatment by the whites.
Florida had become a refuge for runaway slaves from Georgia and South
Carolina. The treaty of 1814 was repudiated by many of the Creeks, who
resented the new settlements of the whites. Those who were most
dissatisfied made common cause with the Seminoles. For a year, General
Gaines, in command at the frontier, complained to the authorities at
Washington of the conduct of the Indians and Spaniards. General Jackson, to
whom the matter was referred, wrote to Gaines that the forts standing in
Spanish territory "ought to be blown off the face of the earth, regardless
of the ground they stand on." In July, a detachment of men and gunboats
under Colonel Church advanced upon Fort Negro. A shot from one of the boats
blew up the powder magazine. The fort was laid in ruins. Of the 324 inmates
270 were killed. Most of the survivors were wounded.

[Sidenote: Death of Gouverneur Morris]

During this year, the "Washington," the first American line-of-battle ship
put to sea with seventy-four guns on her decks. The first American rolling
mill and plant for puddling iron-ore were built at Red Stone Bank in
Pennsylvania. Bishop Asbury, the founder of Methodism in the United States,
preached his last sermon at Richmond, Virginia. During the same year he
died at the age of seventy-one. Other noted Americans who died this year
were Gouverneur Morris of New York, and Spaulding, the reputed author of
the book of Mormon.

[Sidenote: Death of Miranda]

[Sidenote: Independence of Argentine]

Miranda, the South American revolutionist, expired on July 14, in a dungeon
at Cadiz. A British officer who saw him shortly before his death, described
him as "tied to a wall with a chain about his neck like a dog." Ever since
his defeat and detention in Venezuela, his last years had been spent in
captivity. He passed from prison to prison--now at San Carlos, now in Porto
Rico, and finally in Spain. Miranda's failure to obtain grants of amnesty
for Bolivar and his fellow rebels, when he came to terms with the Spanish
general Monteverde, left him discredited with the patriots of South
America. In the meanwhile, Miranda's friend, San Martin, was fighting in
Chile and Peru for South American independence, and was aided in his
struggle by Louis Beltran, an unfrocked friar. On July 9, the independence
of Argentine was proclaimed. Pueyrredon was made President of the new
republic. Paraguay, Uruguay and Bolivia established independent
governments.

[Sidenote: The struggle in Venezuela]

After Miranda's defeat and the fall of Porto Cabello, Bolivar had fled to
Curacoa. He enlisted a corps of refugees in Cartagena and headed an
expedition into New Granada. There he rallied more revolutionists about
him, and, capturing Madalena from the Spaniards, fought his way through to
Caracas. He was welcomed there with extravagant demonstration as the
"Savior of Venezuela." After one more victory on the field of Araure his
star declined. The Spanish general, Boves, defeated him at La Puerta, and
took a terrible vengeance on the patriots. The wounded and prisoners were
killed on the field; the homes of all reputed rebels were burned to the
ground; and the entire population of Aragua was massacred.

[Sidenote: Spanish vengeance]

[Sidenote: Bolivar's adventures]

Montalvo, the Spanish War Minister, reported officially: "General Boves
does not distinguish between the guilty and innocent--soldiers or
non-combatants. All alike are killed for the crime of being born in
America." Bolivar retired to New Granada and thence to Jamaica. An attempt
to assassinate him there failed; for the negro cut-throat who had
undertaken to murder Bolivar killed the wrong person. Bolivar crossed over
to Hayti. There he raised a new expedition. A negro leader, Petion, then
acting-governor of Hayti, helped him in this enterprise, and strongly
advised him to proclaim the freedom of all slaves as the first step on
landing in his country. "For, how can you free your country," said Petion,
"if you don't free all the people in it?" Bolivar heeded his advice. With
six ships and one hundred and fifty men, he set out to reconquer Venezuela
from Spain. He landed at Margerita, where he had the good fortune to
capture several Spanish ships. With them he returned to Santo Domingo for
more men and ammunition. Petion furnished him with funds. Thus reinforced,
Bolivar made a dash for Barcelona in Venezuela. The end of the struggle was
at hand.




1817


[Sidenote: Return of Bolivar]

[Sidenote: General Piar shot]

[Sidenote: O'Higgins]

[Sidenote: San Martin]

Bolivar landed on the north coast of Venezuela on the first day of the new
year. His landing place, Barcelona, was a small town at the foot of the
Maritime Andes, so unprotected against attack that he resolved to leave it
at once. He marched his force in the direction of Santa Fe in New Granada,
hoping to push through to Peru. Marino and Piar, two insurgent leaders
operating in the south, joined forces with Bolivar, and brought 1,200
additional men. By the time their joint column had penetrated well into
Orinoco, the three leaders were at odds with each other. Piar tried to
incite revolt among his followers. Bolivar caused Piar to be seized, and
after a drum-head trial had him shot. In the meanwhile a Spanish force had
swooped down on Barcelona, and massacred the inhabitants. Things were at
this pass when the standard of revolt was once more raised in Chile by
Bernado O'Higgins. He was a natural son of Ambrosio, and had just returned
from school in England. At the time the supreme command of the
revolutionary forces was given to him this famous South American leader was
still a young man, as was his chief lieutenant, MacKenna. By his clever
handling of the campaigns that followed he won the title of "El Primer
Soldado del Nuevo Mundo"--the first soldier of America. It was still at the
outset of his career, in 1817, that help came to the Chileans from Buenos
Ayres across the Andes. The man who brought this aid was San Martin.

At Mendoza, on January 17, San Martin reviewed his little army of 5,000,
all Gaucho horsemen, as lightly clad and provisioned as the Indians of the
Pampas. The women of Mendoza presented the force with a flag bearing the
emblem of the Sun. San Martin held the banner aloft, declaring it "the
first flag of independence which had been blest in South America." This
same flag was carried through all the wars along the Pacific Coast. And
under its tattered shreds San Martin was finally laid to rest sixty years
later.

[Sidenote: Battle of Chacabuco]

[Sidenote: Acuoncagua]

Marching from Mendoza, San Martin made a feint of crossing the Andes by way
of Planchon, thereby inducing a Spanish column under Captain-General Marco
del Ponte to concentrate at Talca. During the progress of these movements,
San Martin and his followers crossed the mountains by the steep route of
Putaendo and Cuevas. Three hundred miles of the stiffest mountain riding
were covered in less than a fortnight. Early in February, San Martin's
army, now barely 4,000 strong, descended upon Villa Nueva. On February 7,
they fought their first battle on Chilean soil with the Spanish outposts at
Chacabuco. Driving the Spaniards before him, San Martin, advanced into the
plain, and presently joined forces with O'Higgins' infantry. New mounts
were provided for the cavalry. At the strong post of Acuoncagua the
Spaniards made a stand, but they were outnumbered by the insurgents. San
Martin delivered a frontal attack, while O'Higgins outflanked the enemy
with an impetuous charge, with the result that the whole Spanish force was
routed beyond recovery. The officers fled to Valparaiso. By the middle of
February, San Martin entered Santiago de Chile. A new republican junta was
formed and complete independence of Spain was declared. O'Higgins assumed
the position of dictator.

[Sidenote: Battle of Talca]

[Sidenote: Battle of the Maypo]

[Sidenote: Liberation of Chile]

All Chile was free now except in the south. General Ordonez, commanding the
Spanish forces there, was defeated and fell back to Talcahuano. San Martin
prepared to invade Peru. Anticipating such an attack, Abascal, the Spanish
Viceroy of Peru, despatched Osorio with an expedition of 3,500 veterans,
who had just arrived from Spain, to Talcahuano. As soon as these
reinforcements came, Ordonez set out from Talcahuano with the vanguard to
march on Santiago de Chile, and met the patriot forces near Talca. The
revolutionists largely outnumbered the Spaniards, but were poorly
disciplined and ill-provisioned. While they lost time the Spanish main
column under Osorio came up. Ordonez took advantage of the clumsy
manoeuvres of the revolutionists to drive a sharp attack between their
two wings, piercing their centre. The battle was won after the first
fifteen minutes. O'Higgins was wounded and had to be carried out of the
fight. San Martin, with his right wing, fell back on San Fernando. With
great difficulty O'Higgins managed to reach Santiago, where he was
presently joined by San Martin. Steadily the Spanish column advanced on
Santiago. The two revolutionary leaders by almost superhuman efforts
succeeded in rallying and equipping a force of 5,000 defenders. On April 5,
the Spanish army appeared before Santiago de Chile. Near the Maypo, nine
miles from Santiago, the revolutionists took up a strong position. Osorio
opened the battle about noon with artillery. Soon all the troops were
engaged, the fiercest fight raging around a hacienda where San Martin and
O'Higgins had their headquarters. Several times the ranch was lost and
retaken. By sundown the Spaniards advanced all along the line. The battle
seemed lost to the patriots. At this juncture, as the famous regiment of
Burgos on the Spanish right was drawing in its deployed lines for a final
column attack, Colonel O'Brien, at the head of the insurgent cavalry
reserves, charged into the opening and overthrew the Burgos battalions.
O'Higgins immediately charged the rest of the Spanish right wing, and San
Martin simultaneously attacked in the centre. The whole Spanish army gave
away. More than 2,000 Spaniards were killed and wounded. Osorio with his
staff escaped to Peru. The victory of Santiago not only freed Chile, but
left Peru open to the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: Monroe's Presidency]

In the United States of North America, during this interval, a new
President had begun his administration. James Monroe was inaugurated as
President in his fifty-ninth year. He had been a member of the Continental
Congress, and at thirty-six a Minister to France. Under Madison he served
as Secretary of War. Crawford, Calhoun, Meigs, Wirt and Rush were members
of his Cabinet, and were all of the dominant Democratic-Republican party.
Business throughout the country began to revive almost at once when the
re-chartered National Bank went into operation in Philadelphia on the day
of Monroe's inauguration.

[Sidenote: "Era of good feeling"]

In June, President Monroe undertook a three months' personal inspection of
the military posts of the country. Passing through New York, Boston and
Portland, and crossing New Hampshire and Vermont to Ogdensburg, he took a
boat to Sackett's Harbor and Niagara. From there he went to Buffalo and
Detroit, and returned to Washington. Everywhere the people greeted him by
thousands. Monroe on this occasion wore the three-cornered hat,
scarlet-bordered blue coat and buff breeches of the American Revolutionary
army. The "Boston Journal" called the times the "Era of Good Feeling," and
the expression has passed into American history as a characteristic of
Monroe's entire administration.

[Sidenote: Western prairies settled]

It was an era notable for the extraordinary growth of the Western States.
Settlers were encouraged to buy government land on the instalment plan, and
the States refrained from levying taxes on these lands until years after
the settlers had received their title deeds. Endless processions of prairie
wagons passed through New York and Pennsylvania. On one turnpike alone,
16,000 vehicles paid toll during the year. Pittsburg at this time had a
population of 7,000 persons. The log cabin was the house of all, with its
rough chimney, its greased paper in a single window, its door with latch
and string, a plank floor and single room, corn husk brooms and its Dutch
oven. In the newly broken ground corn and wheat were planted, which, when
harvested, were thrashed with the flail and winnowed with a sheet. Little
settlements sprang up here and there on the rolling prairie, with
store-taverns, blacksmith shops and mills. This a thousand times repeated
was seen in western New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and
Michigan.

[Sidenote: Steam navigation]

[Sidenote: The Erie Canal]

[Sidenote: "Thanatopsis"]

During the same year the newly organized territory of Mississippi, formed
from a division of Alabama, was admitted as the twentieth State to the
Union. The first line of steam propelled ocean packets was organized to run
between New York and Liverpool. In the western frontier town of St. Louis
the first steamboat made its appearance. On July 4, ground was broken for
the Erie Canal, which was to connect the city of New York with the great
inland waters. On the strength of this progressive achievement De Witt
Clinton became a candidate for the governorship of New York. Among other
notable events of this year were the foundation of the New York State
Library, Gallaudet's foundation of the first school for the deaf and dumb
at Hartford, and the establishment of the earliest theological seminaries
of the Episcopal Church in America, as well as of the first Unitarian
Divinity School at Harvard. William Cullen Bryant, barely come of age,
published his master work, "Thanatopsis," in the "North American Review."

[Sidenote: Stenography]

[Sidenote: German liberalism]

[Sidenote: The Wartburg festival]

[Sidenote: European courts alarmed]

[Sidenote: Advances in scholarship]

[Sidenote: African missionary work]

In other parts of the world, likewise, the return of peace was followed by
a general advance in culture and civilization. Shortly after the
re-establishment of the American National Bank, Canada followed suit with
government banks at Montreal and Quebec. Hanka, in Bohemia, claimed to have
discovered the famous medieval lyrics of Rukopis Kralodvorsky written at
the end of the thirteenth century. Across the border in Poland the new
University of Cracow began its career. In Munich, Franz Gabelsberger
invented the first working system of shorthand, which, in a perfected form,
is still in use in Germany. During this year common school education took
an immense stride in Germany, after the establishment in Prussia of a
distinct Ministry for Public Education. Unfortunately the government soon
came into conflict with the bolder spirits at the universities. By reason
of the more liberal privileges allowed to it by the Duke of Weimar, the
University of Jena took the lead in the national Teutonic agitation
inaugurated by Fichte. On October 18, the students of Jena, aided by
delegates from all the student fraternities of Protestant Germany, held a
festival at Eisenach to celebrate the three-hundredth anniversary of the
Reformation. It was also the anniversary of the battle of Leipzig. Five
hundred ardent young men, among them scholars who had fought at Leipzig,
Ligny and Waterloo, assembled in the halls of Luther's Wartburg Castle.
They sang and drank, and fraternized with the members of the militia of
Eisenach. In the evening they had a torchlight procession and lighted a
huge bonfire on the hill opposite the castle. In imitation of Martin
Luther's burning of the Pope's Bull they consigned a number of their pet
aversions to the flames. Thus they burned a soldier's straight-jacket and
corporal's cane, as well as a recent pamphlet by one Schmalz written in
defense of the old Prussian bureaucracy. Rash words were uttered about the
broken faith of princes. They were aimed at King Frederick William of
Prussia, who had promised to give his country a constitution, but had
failed to keep his word. The Wartburg festival, childish as it was in many
of its manifestations, created singular alarm throughout Germany and
elsewhere. The King of Prussia sent his Prime Minister, Hardenberg, to
Weimar to make a thorough investigation of the affair. Richelieu, the Prime
Minister of France, wrote from Paris whether another revolution was
breaking out; and Metternich insisted that the Duke of Weimar should
curtail the liberties of his subjects. The heavy hand of reaction fell upon
all German universities. German scholars were compelled to turn their
interests from public affairs to pure science and scholarship, to the
benefit of German learning. The study of history and archeology took an
upward turn with Brentano's publication of old German ballads and
Lachmann's original version of the Nibelungen songs. At this time an
Italian archeologist, Belzoni, was adding new chapters to ancient history
by his original researches in Egypt, which resulted in the removal of the
Colossus of Memnon to Alexandria, and in the opening of the great Cephren
pyramid. In distant South Africa the first English missionaries began their
labors among the blacks. Although the Governor of Natal at first refused to
permit Robert Moffat, the first Wesleyan missionary in those parts, to
disturb the Kaffirs with his preachings, Moffat pressed on undismayed and
soon established a mission beyond the Orange River.

[Sidenote: Green Bag inquiry]

[Sidenote: Manchester Blanketers]

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in England]

In England, industrial depression dragged on. Early in the year riots broke
out in London on the opening of Parliament. While driving to the House of
Lords, the Prince Regent, now grown thoroughly unpopular on account of the
scandals with his wife, was hooted by a crowd in St. James's Park. The
police claimed that an air gun had been discharged at the Prince and made
an attack on the crowd. A number of persons were injured. This was followed
in February by the great Green Bag Inquiry, when Lord Sidmouth laid before
Parliament a green bag full of reports concerning seditions. Bills were
introduced to suspend the habeas corpus act and to provide for the coercion
of public meetings. Seditious publications were likewise to be suppressed.
In March occurred the rising of the so-called Blanketers in
Manchester--dissatisfied workingmen who started in a body for London
carrying blanket rolls and other necessaries. Their march was stopped by
the military. In April, seven members of the so-called society of Luddites
were hanged at Leicester for breaking labor-saving machinery. Shortly
afterward eighteen persons were hanged for forging notes on the Bank of
England. It was found that since the redemption of specie payments no less
than 17,885 forged notes had been presented. Nearly two hundred persons
were apprehended and tried in court for this offence. Shortly afterward
another insurrection which broke out in Derbyshire, and which was led by
Jeremiah Brandrett, was suppressed by soldiers.

[Sidenote: "The Revolt of Islam"]

[Sidenote: "Lalla Rookh"]

[Sidenote: John Keats]

[Sidenote: "Blackwood's"]

While the working classes of England and Ireland were thus struggling
against their miseries, English literature shone forth in new splendor.
Shelley brought out his "Revolt of Islam" and Tom Moore published his
"Lalla Rookh." John Keats at the age of barely twenty-one published his
first poems. The volume attracted little attention. The appearance of
Blackwood's new magazine in Edinburgh, on the other hand, was hailed as an
event in English letters.

[Sidenote: French letters]

[Sidenote: Beranger]

In France, likewise, the return of peace gave a new lease of life to
literature. The French Academy was reorganized to consist of forty members,
who were elected for life, and who were to be regarded as "the highest
authority on questions relating to language, grammar, rhetoric, poetry and
the publication of the French classics." Chateaubriand was the Academy's
foremost member. Beranger on the other hand, albeit his lyrics had reached
the height of their popularity, fell into official disfavor by reason of
his glorification of Napoleonic times, as exemplified in his ballads "La
Vivandiere," "La Cocarde Blanche," or "Le Juge de Charenton." The last
poem, with its veiled allusions to the Lavalette episode, was made the
subject of an interpellation in the Chamber of Deputies. While this was
still pending further offence was given by the publication of Beranger's
satirical piece on "The Holy Alliance." Beranger had to give up his
position as secretary at the University of France, and was soon afterward
arrested among his boon companions at Madame Saguet's near Le Moulin Vert.
He was placed on trial for the alleged blasphemies committed in his song
"Le Dieu des Bonnes Gens," and condemned to spend three months in prison
and to pay a heavy fine.

[Sidenote: Death of Madame de Stael]

[Sidenote: Death of Massena]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Beyle's "Lives of
Mozart and Haydn"; the performance of Scribe's early plays, and the death
of Madame de Stael, which occurred on July 14. This gifted daughter of
Necker had not been allowed to return to France until after the fall of
Napoleon. Her last work was a treatise of the Constitutional Government,
entitled "Considerations sur les Principaux Evenements de la Revolution
Francaise," and published posthumously by her long time German companion
and adviser, Schlegel. Marshal Massena died during the same year. His
funeral was attended with imposing military honors rendered him by his old
followers and comrades-in-arms, who recalled the triumphs of Rivoli,
Essling, and a score of other victories in which this famous warrior had
borne the brunt of the fighting.

[Sidenote: Wachabite rebellion]

[Sidenote: Seminole war]

This year would have been one of peace, the first since the outbreak of the
French Revolution, but for another uprising of the Wachabites in Arabia
under the standard of Tourkee and the re-occurrence of North American
Indian troubles. A year had passed after the destruction of Fort Negro in
Florida before the whites found a pretext for another attack. King Natchez
was accused of receiving fugitive negroes, and he replied: "I have no
negroes.... I shall use force to stop any armed American from passing my
lands or my towns." The Seminoles looked with alarm on the new forts of the
United States. At Fowltown, on Flint River, the Indians, in November, put
up a war pole, and the chief warned Colonel Meigs in command at Fort Scott
not to cross the Flint River. Gaines reached the place with some regular
troops and volunteers, and Twiggs, with 250 men, moved upon the town,
killed some of the people and burned the village. The revenge of the
Seminoles was swift and bloody. Settlers were massacred and the property of
the whites within reach of the Indians was destroyed. Over 2,700 Seminoles
took the field. General Jackson assumed command on the day after Christmas.
He declared that so long as the Spaniards held Florida the trouble would
continue.

[Sidenote: Pindaree war]

[Sidenote: Treaty of Toona]

About the same time the British in India were plunged into further wars
with the natives. First the Pindarees sent out plundering bands from Malwa.
To suppress them, Lord Hastings had to collect an army of 120,000, the
largest force yet mustered in India. From Madras, four army divisions under
Sir Thomas Hislop crossed the Nerbudda, and drove the Pindarees toward
Bengal. By the great number of his remaining troops Lord Hastings overawed
the neighboring rulers, Peishwa Sindia of the Mahratta, Ameer Khan, Holkar
and Runjit Singh of the Punjab. Peishwa Baji Rao was compelled to sign a
treaty of neutrality at Toona. In October, thereupon, Lord Hastings left
Cawnpore and crossed the Jumna. The Pindarees were routed in a series of
swift-fought engagements. One of their chieftains, Khurin, gave himself up
with his whole household, while another, Chetu, was killed by a tiger while
hiding in the jungle.

[Sidenote: Mahratta war]

The Peishwa of the Mahrattas, who was biding his time until the British
forces should withdraw from his dominions, grew impatient and threatened
open war. To appease him a newly arrived British regiment was withdrawn
from Toona to Khirki, a village about four miles from the British
Residency. This concession only encouraged the Peishwa to further
resistance.

[Sidenote: Hindu Blondin]

[Sidenote: Outbreak of Poonah]

[Sidenote: Flight of Baji Rao]

The Mahratta war opened with a romantic incident. Trimbukji Dainglia, one
of the favorites of the Peishwa, was held closely confined by the English
at Thanna for his share in the murder of one of Baji Rao's enemies. Before
the outbreak of hostilities the Mahrattas managed to get word to him of
what was coming. A native groom in the service of one of the British
officers passed the window of the prisoner every day leading his master's
horses. As he did so he trolled a native song the purport of which the
British guards neither understood nor suspected. It has thus been
translated by Bishop Heber:

  Behind the bush the bowmen hide
    The horse beneath the tree.
  Where shall I find a chief to ride
    The jungle paths with me?

  There are five-and-fifty horses there,
    And four-and-fifty men;
  When the fifty-fifth shall mount his steed,
    The Dekhan thrives again.

A few days after this Trimbukji Dainglia was missing. He had broken a bar
from its setting, scaled the wall, and joined a party of horsemen lying in
wait. With them he fled to the jungles of Kanderish. Just before the
outbreak of hostilities a British officer thought he recognized him at
Poonah. On November 5, the British Resident, Elphinstone, left Poonah to
inspect the forces at Khirki. On that same day the Mahrattas burned
Elphinstone's house and rich Sanskrit library. Baji Rao attacked the
military post Khirki with 26,000 men, but was repulsed with a loss of five
hundred. The British immediately despatched an army under General Smith for
Poonah. On November 15, they prepared for a general attack on the morrow,
but in the night Baji Rao fled from Poonah. Thus he surrendered his
dominions without a blow.

Appa Sahib, the Rajah of Nagpore, meanwhile had made common cause with Baji
Rao. On the evening of November 24, he brought up his forces and attacked
the British Residency at Nagpore. The resulting battle of Sitaboldi is
famous in Hindu annals. As Wheeler, the historian of British India,
describes it:

[Sidenote: Battle of Sitaboldi]

"The English had no European regiment, as they had at Khirki; they had
scarcely fourteen hundred Sepoys fit for duty, including three troops of
Bengal cavalry, and only four six-pounders. Appa Sahib had an army of
eighteen thousand men, including four thousand Arabs, the best soldiers in
the Dekhan; he had also thirty-six guns. The battle lasted from six o'clock
in the evening of the 26th of November until noon the next day. For many
hours the English were in sore peril; their fate seemed to hang upon a
thread. The Arabs were beginning to close round the Residency, when a happy
stroke of British daring changed the fortunes of the day. Captain
Fitzgerald, who commanded the Bengal cavalry, was posted in the Residency
compound and was anxious to charge the Arabs; but he was forbidden. Again
he implored permission, but was told to charge at his peril. 'On my peril
be it!' cried Fitzgerald. Clearing the inclosures, the Bengal cavalry bore
down upon the enemy's horse, captured two guns, and cut up a body of
infantry. The British Sepoys hailed the exploit with loud huzzahs, and
seeing the explosion of one of the enemy's tumbrels, rushed down the hill,
driving the Arabs before them. The victory was won, but the English had
lost a quarter of their number."

  [Illustration: LAST MOMENTS OF MAXIMILIAN
    Painted by J. Paul Laurens
    From Carbon Print by Braun, Clement & Co., N.Y.]

[Sidenote: Appa Sahib's escape]

[Sidenote: Battle of Nahidpore]

[Sidenote: Defence of Korygaun]

[Sidenote: End of Mahratta rule]

Appa Sahib surrendered himself and was placed under arrest. Presently he
made good his escape and found a refuge with the Rajah of Jodhpur. In
Holkar's State of Indore affairs ran in a similar groove. The Regent Mother
showed herself inclined to come to an agreement with the British marching
northward under Sir Thomas Hislop. But the Mahratta chiefs were bent on
war, and murdered the Regent Mother. A battle, henceforth, was unavoidable.
Already the British supply train had been plundered by the Mahrattas. The
battle was fought on December 21, at Nahidpore. On each occasion Sir John
Malcolm commanded the British troops and won a complete victory. All the
Hindu guns and swords fell into British hands. Then came the heroic defence
of Korygaun, still celebrated in British Indian annals. A detachment of
Bombay Sepoys and native cavalry, under the command of Captain Staunton and
ten English officers, in all 800 men with two guns, were caught unawares by
the Peishwa's army of 30,000 Mahratta Gosains. Captain Staunton's force
intrenched itself in the village of Korygaun and prepared for the worst.
The Mahrattas completely surrounded the place and the defenders were cut
off from all water and supplies. Then came a succession of fierce rushes by
the Mahratta horse and foot, every one of which had to be fought off in
desperate hand-to-hand encounters. Of the ten white officers eight were
killed; besides them Staunton lost one-third of his Sepoys. The Mahrattas
left 600 on the field. To the present day the exploit is celebrated in the
songs and stories of the Dekhan. The Peishwa witnessed the long fight from
a neighboring hill, and was beside himself when his discouraged troops
refused to renew the battle. After this Baji Rao could no longer hold his
army together. By the close of the year his forces were dispersed. It was
the end of Mahratta rule in the Dekhan.




1818


[Sidenote: Battle of Ashti]

[Sidenote: Baji Rao's surrender]

Peace was re-established in India shortly after New Year's day. Lord
Hastings would stop at nothing but the absolute deposition of the Peishwa.
He had long resolved to reduce Baji Rao to the condition of Napoleon at St.
Helena. Accordingly, he delivered the Rajah of Satara from the thraldom of
generations, and assigned to him sufficient territory for support. This
done he set himself to hunt down the deposed Peishwa. For several months
Baji Rao remained at large. He made a feeble stand at Ashti, but fled at
the first shot, leaving his army to be defeated by General Smith. It was on
this occasion that the Rajah of Satara fell into English hands. Later in
the year Baji Rao was surrounded by British troops, under the command of
Sir John Malcolm. No alternative was left him but to die or give up. The
terms offered by Malcolm were so liberal as to excite astonishment in
Europe. While the great Napoleon was condemned to spend his remaining days
on a mere pittance at St. Helena, this most cowardly of Indian princes was
allowed to live in luxury near Cawnpore, on a yearly grant of L80,000. His
friend Trimbukji Dainglia, however, when captured, was condemned to close
confinement in the fortress of Chunar.

[Sidenote: Lord Hastings' Indian policy]

The remains of the Holkar states were permitted to endure, nor would
Hastings sanction the proposed dethronement of the family of Jaswant Rao.
Holkar was merely required to seize certain territories, and to confirm the
grants already made to Ameer Khan. From a sovereign principality the land
was reduced to a subsidiary state under British guarantee. Otherwise the
infant Mulhar, Rao Holkar, was treated as an independent prince and his
administration was left in the hands of a native Durbar, aided by the
British Resident. The policy of Lord Hastings, although severely criticised
in England, must be pronounced a success in the light of later events. From
the suppression of the Pindarees and the extinction of the Peishwa in 1818,
down to the days of the great mutiny, no serious attempt was made to
overthrow British suzerainty by means of an armed confederation of native
states.

In some respects the administration of Lord Hastings marks a new era in the
history of India. Hastings was the first Governor-General who encouraged
the education of the native population. Early in his administration he
denounced the maxim of his predecessors, that native ignorance would insure
the security of British rule, as an utterly unworthy and futile doctrine.
Accordingly, he promoted the establishment of native schools and
publications.

[Sidenote: Death of Warren Hastings]

[Sidenote: Hastings' career]

The affairs of India were kept before the British public by the renewed
discussion that followed the death of Lord Hastings' great namesake, Warren
Hastings. It was due to the scandals of Warren Hastings' career in India,
and his famous impeachment toward the close of the previous century, that
the administrative reforms and modern rule in India were inaugurated during
the nineteenth century. This reform began with the act, known at Pitt's
Bill, by which the British Crown assumed supreme authority over the civil
and military administration of the affairs in India by the British East
India Company. Henceforward, no alliances could be formed with any native
prince without the express sanction of Parliament. This act arose directly
out of Warren Hastings' confession that he had accepted a present of a
hundred thousand pounds from Asof-Ud-Daula. Warren Hastings' record, though
he was ultimately acquitted, was lastingly besmirched by his dubious
monetary transactions, and it was for this reason that William Pitt refused
to recommend him for the peerage, or for honorable employment under the
British Crown. Yet he was the greatest statesman that ever ruled India. His
overthrow of the French in India, of the first Mahratta rising, and of the
formidable rebellion of Hyder Ali, are among the greatest achievements of
British colonial extension. The disgrace of Warren Hastings was a great
event in English history, but it made no impression on the people in India.
They only knew him as one of the greatest of conquerors and their
deliverer. Philip Francis, who brought about Hastings' downfall, so far
from supplanting him, is remembered now only as the probable author of the
anonymous "Letters of Junius."

[Sidenote: Ross' and Franklin's Expeditions]

[Sidenote: "Frankenstein"]

[Sidenote: "Endymion"]

[Sidenote: Macadam roads]

[Sidenote: Invention of Velocipede]

Besides the death of Warren Hastings, several other notable events
preoccupied the attention of Englishmen. During this year Sir John Ross
sailed north to discover a northwest passage. Another relief expedition
under Lieutenant Franklin, which had sailed after him, resulted only in
failure. Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley published her curious novel
"Frankenstein," and John Keats brought out his long poem "Endymion," for
which he was violently assailed by the critics, notably by Jeffries, of
"Blackwood's Magazine." Shelley, Moore, Hunt, and eventually Byron, warmly
took his part. In the meanwhile a number of industrial reforms were
introduced in England. Infant schools were first thrown open during this
year, and steam was first used for heating purposes. A company in Edinburgh
undertook to light the streets with gas. John Loudon Macadam's new system
of road building was successfully introduced. In France similar strides
were made in industrial progress. Joseph Nicephore Niepce invented his
velocipede. The kindred invention of the "draisine," or dandy-horse was
patented for Baron Drais of Sauerbron. These inventions contained the germ
of the modern bicycle.

[Sidenote: Congress of Aachen]

[Sidenote: Czar Alexander aroused]

The Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle, consisting of the sovereigns of Russia,
Austria and Prussia, aided by ministers of Great Britain and France, signed
a convention for the withdrawal of the army of occupation from France, and
for the reception of France into the European concert. For other countries
the deliberations of this Congress were not so beneficent. Since the Polish
Diet in the spring, when Alexander had promised to give all Russia a
constitutional government, a change of spirit had come over the Czar. This
change has been explained by the revelation of a military conspiracy
against his person. At all events, Alexander appeared at Aix-la-Chapelle
with the most reactionary proposals. Up to this time Metternich, the
inveterate foe of liberalism, had found in the Czar his most formidable
opponent. Now the Czar distributed among his fellow sovereigns a pamphlet
written by one Stourdza, which described Germany as on the brink of
revolution, and blamed the universities and public press. Metternich
instantly took his cue from the Czar. Before the end of the conference he
delivered to the King of Prussia and to Hardenberg two papers containing
his recommendations for the management of Prussian affairs. Frederick
William was warned against giving his people a national parliament. After
the example of the Czar, Metternich inveighed against the universities and
the press.

[Sidenote: Metternich's sentiments]

"The revolutionists," he said, "despairing of attaining their end
themselves, have formed the settled plan of educating the next generation
for revolution. The high school establishment is a preparatory school for
university disorders. The university seizes the youth as he leaves boyhood,
and gives him a revolutionary training. This mischief is common to all
Germany, and must be checked by joint action of the governments. Gymnasia
(high schools), on the contrary, were first invented at Berlin. For these,
palliative measures are no longer sufficient; it has become a duty of
State for the King of Prussia to destroy the evil. The whole institution in
every shape must be closed and uprooted."

[Sidenote: Prussian reaction]

The reactionary policy outlined in these papers became the guiding star of
King Frederick William of Prussia. They outline the history of what
actually was carried out in Prussia during the succeeding generation.

[Sidenote: Misgovernment in Spain]

It was not only in Germany that the new spirit of liberalism gave concern
to the members of the Holy Alliance. In Spain it appeared in a more
dangerous form, since it was espoused there by the military class.
Ferdinand's misgovernment of Spain had soon resulted in an empty treasury,
in consequence of which soldiers and sailors received no pay for several
years. Military revolts were instituted by General Mina, and by Porliar and
Lacy at this period; but they failed through the indifference of the
soldiers themselves. The government's attempt to offset the numerous
desertions from the army by seizing and enrolling some 60,000 beggars in
military service, proved a complete failure. Napoleon's prediction to
Rear-Admiral Cockburn that Spain was doomed to lose all her colonies was
reaching fulfilment in America.

[Sidenote: Defection of Spanish colonies]

Amelia Island, at the mouth of the St. Mary's River in Florida, had long
been the resort of lawless men, among whom were European adventurers
attracted by the South American revolution, and many fugitive slaves from
Georgia and South Carolina. A plan was formed to organize a revolution on
that island and to add Florida to the revolting South American republics.
The forces gathered there became too strong for the Spaniards, and
President Monroe decided to interfere. Gaines was sent to Amelia Island;
but before he arrived, Aury, the commander of the malcontents, had
surrendered to Commodore Henley. General Jackson, who was operating in
those parts against the Seminoles, declared that "the cause of the United
States must be carried to any point within the limits of Florida where an
enemy is permitted to be protected." All eastern Florida, he set forth to
the President, should be seized when Amelia Island was taken, and should be
held as an indemnity for the outrages of Spain upon American citizens. This
plan, Jackson said, could be carried out without implicating the United
States. "Let it be signified to me that the province of Florida would be
desirable to the United States, and in sixty days it will be accomplished."

[Sidenote: Andrew Jackson in Florida]

[Sidenote: Summary military measures]

[Sidenote: Pensacola occupied]

When the order to assume command reached Jackson, he raised a volunteer
force in Tennessee from among his old soldiers. With these and the troops
left by Gaines he marched into Florida. On the site of the Negro fort he
built Fort Gadsden. He then advanced to the Bay of St. Marks, defeating the
few Seminoles whom he encountered. On April 7, he raised the American flag
there in place of the standard of Spain. Two Seminole chiefs who had taken
refuge on an American vessel in the bay, and who were supposed to have
participated in the massacre of a party of Americans, were brought on shore
and hanged. Leaving a strong garrison at St. Marks, Jackson marched a
hundred miles to the Indian town of Suwanee, where he hoped to capture
Billy Bowlegs and his band. But the Indians, warned of his approach,
escaped across the river. Suwanee was destroyed. Jackson, when at St.
Marks, had taken prisoner one Arbuthnot, a Scotchman and supposed Indian
sympathizer, whom he ordered to be confined until his return. At Suwanee,
Captain Ambrister, a former English officer, intending to join the Indians,
blundered into Jackson's camp, and was held a prisoner. On his return,
Jackson ordered the two men to be tried by court-martial, on the charge of
warning the Indians of the approach of the American soldiers, and both were
convicted and executed. Jackson, on reaching Fort Gadsden, received from
the Spanish Governor of Pensacola a protest against his invasion. He turned
back, occupied Pensacola, and took the Fort of Carrios De Barrancas, to
which the governor had fled.

[Sidenote: Jackson unrebuked]

[Sidenote: An amicable settlement]

When the news of Jackson's course reached Washington, Congress engaged in a
heated debate over his occupation of the forts of a friendly power. In
defending himself Jackson wrote that the Secretary of War had given him
full power to conduct the campaign in the manner which seemed best. Spain,
he claimed, had failed to fulfil that article of the treaty by which she
was bound to restrain the Florida Indians from hostilities. Popular feeling
proved too strong for Congress to assert its privileges as the sole
war-making power. Jackson was not even rebuked for his course. During all
those months, Onis, the Spanish Minister, and Adams were in negotiation
over a treaty, which was not ratified until two years later. Florida was to
be ceded to the United States on a payment of $5,000,000, to be applied in
satisfying the claims of American citizens against Spain. The Sabine River,
instead of the Rio Grande, was made the dividing line between the United
States and Spanish territory. The line was to run from the mouth of the
Sabine to the 32d parallel, thence north to the Red River and along it to
the 100th meridian, thence north to the Arkansas and along that river to
its source on the 42d parallel, and thence west to the Pacific. War with
Spain was thus averted.

[Sidenote: The slavery issue]

While the Florida question was under consideration, there arose another far
more momentous to America. Free labor in the North and slave labor in the
South were brought squarely face to face. Slave labor was fast rising in
value. The new lands of the lower Mississippi opened a vast field for the
employment of slaves in the production of cotton, sugar and tobacco. It was
believed the extension of slavery into that new territory would save it
from gradual extinction. The interstate traffic in slaves was viewed with
abhorrence by many leading men in the South. John Randolph, while upholding
slavery, denounced the traffic that was carried on in the Southern
plantations. On the other hand it was seen that compromise would be of
little value if the North only was to be permitted to increase its power by
the admission of new States. New slave States as well were demanded by the
Southerners.

[Sidenote: Contention over Missouri]

In March, the citizens of Missouri had asked permission to form a State
constitution and to be admitted into the Union. It was tacitly understood
that slavery might be carried into territory east of the Mississippi
belonging originally to the existing slave States. But Louisiana, west of
the Mississippi, belonged to the whole of the United States rather than to
any one of the several States. The question now arose whether Congress
should establish slavery anew in territory of the United States. The
alternative was presented to the people of the North whether to submit to
the demands of the South or to consent to a dissolution of the Union.
Though represented by a majority in Congress, the Northern States were
defeated after a long struggle. John Quincy Adams doubted if Congress,
under the American Constitution, had the right to prohibit slavery in a
territory where it already existed. "If a dissolution of the Union should
result from the slave question," he wrote, "it is obvious that it must
shortly afterward be followed by a universal emancipation of the slaves."

[Sidenote: American Pension system inaugurated]

[Sidenote: Oregon in dispute]

During this same year Congress first granted pensions to needy veterans of
the Revolutionary War and soon afterward to the widows and children of dead
soldiers. Thus began the system of American pension legislation for former
American soldiers which was destined to grow to such gigantic proportions
in later years. Up to that time the number of stripes in the American flag
had been eighteen. Now a bill was approved reducing the number of stripes
to thirteen, the number of original States comprising the Union. The
number of stars was to be made equal to that of the States. Soon afterward,
the new flag, with twenty stars in its quartering, was first raised over
the halls of Congress. Shortly after this the Fifteenth Congress adjourned.
On October 20, a convention with Great Britain was signed respecting
fisheries and boundaries, giving to Americans the right to fish in
Newfoundland waters and renewing the agreement of 1815, making the 49th
parallel the boundary between the United States and British North America.
The convention also provided for the joint occupation of Oregon for ten
years longer.

The glossy finish to leather known as "patent" leather was first patented
in this year. Another notable invention of the time was the process of
engraving on soft steel.

[Sidenote: Illinois a State]

The second session of the American Congress was not called until late in
the year. Illinois was then admitted as the twenty-first State of the
Union.




1819


[Sidenote: Florida ceded by Spain]

[Sidenote: Southern Indians dispossessed]

[Sidenote: Alabama a state]

Early in the year Andrew Jackson was called to Washington. He was the hero
of the day. When he visited New York he was received with public honors. On
February 22, a treaty with Spain was adopted by which she surrendered all
claims to Florida and ceded West Florida. The cost of the war to the United
States had been forty million dollars. The year was marked by the enforced
retirement of large bodies of the Cherokees from Georgia to the
Mississippi. The Cherokees as well as the Creeks, the Choctaws and the
Chickasaws were greatly perturbed at the prospect of their final removal
from the land which the United States had guaranteed to them. Partly as a
result of these changes, the Territory of Alabama was admitted to the Union
as the twenty-second State.

[Sidenote: The Missouri problem]

There were now eleven free and eleven slave States; and serious opposition
arose to the admission of Missouri. In February, the first bill was
introduced in the House for the admission of that Territory. James
Tallmadge, Jr., of New York, proposed that there should be no personal
servitude in the State except by those already held as slaves, and that
these should be manumitted within a certain period. This proposition he
modified by moving an amendment providing that the introduction of slavery
should be prohibited, but that those already slaves in Missouri should
remain so, and that the children of such slaves should be liberated upon
reaching the age of twenty-five. The proposition to hold in slavery a
generation yet unborn was fiercely resented. The two Houses did not agree,
and the question went over to another year. The South presented an unbroken
and unyielding front. Caleb of Georgia said that this attempt to interfere
with slavery was "destructive of the peace and harmony of the union"; that
those who proposed it "were kindling a fire which all the waters of the
ocean could not extinguish. It could be extinguished only in blood."

[Sidenote: Antagonism to slavery]

[Sidenote: Maine _vs._ Missouri]

The Missouri question having been left for the next session, the cognate
issue concerning a government for the Arkansas country south of parallel
33 deg. 30' was taken up. In both Houses an amendment to prohibit slavery was
lost. As a compromise a representative from Delaware suggested a division
of the Western Territory between the free and slave States. The contest was
renewed at the December session. Resolutions of Northern Legislatures
condemning the placing of slavery under the national government were
presented, and were treated with contempt by the Southern statesmen.
Senator Mason of North Carolina said: "They may philosophize at town
meetings about it as much as they please, but they know nothing about the
question." In the House the matter was brought up in the same form as in
the previous session. James W. Taylor of New York presented an amendment
prohibiting slavery, but holding in bondage those who were already slaves.
He kept this point clearly in view through the debate that followed.
Finally the bill was passed by a vote of 91 to 82, the prohibitory
amendment being adopted by a majority of eight. The bill for the admission
of Missouri was attached to that for the admission of Maine. The suggestion
of this stratagem was made on the 20th of December by Henry Clay, who
declared that he did "not mean to give his consent to the admission of
Maine, so long as the doctrine was upheld of annexing conditions to the
admission of States beyond the mountains." The analogy was scarcely just.
Under the Constitution the right was absolute; Maine was a part of the
original thirteen States of the Republic. The problem respecting Missouri
was radically different, and resolved itself into the question whether
Congress, under the American Constitution, had the right to create a new
State out of the purchased territory, and to admit it to the Union without
a republican form of government. Clay's threat was improved upon. The
judiciary committee reported the House bill for the admission of Maine,
adding an amendment for the admission of Missouri. Roberts of Pennsylvania
moved to amend the amendment by prohibiting slavery in Missouri, but his
motion was rejected by a majority of eleven (including six Senators from
free States). A motion to make the admission of Maine a separate question
was also defeated. The two Houses now stood directly opposed to each other.
The Representatives would not retreat from their decision to prohibit
slavery in Missouri; the Senate was equally determined that Missouri should
be admitted as a slave State. Had the House maintained its ground, the
United States for the next half century might have had another history.

[Sidenote: The Missouri compromise]

Senator Thomas of Illinois, who had voted thus far with the South, now came
forward with a compromise. He proposed to prohibit slavery in that portion
of the Louisiana Purchase north of 36 deg. 30' excepting Missouri. This was
accepted in the Senate by thirty-four votes against ten. But when the bill
came up two days later for its final passage it received only a majority of
four. After much delay the compromise measure was finally passed through
the House by a majority of 134 to 42 votes. The measure was a Northern
victory, having been carried by Northern votes. For the moment peace was
gained; but the fire was only smothered. On the one side there was a gain
of one slave State; on the other side, a mere promise to prohibit slavery
in future States.

[Sidenote: Modern progress]

[Sidenote: Irving's "Sketch Book"]

Notwithstanding the political agitation, general progress in America was
pronounced and rapid during this period. Steam navigation was no longer a
novelty. The Erie Canal was well under way. New towns were springing up
along its course. Blanchard invented his lathe for turning irregular forms.
The famous Danish physicist, Hans Christian Oersted, made his classical
electrical experiments with the magnetic needle and laid the foundation of
our modern theory of electromagnetism. The literary event of the year in
America was the appearance of Washington Irving's "Sketch Book." The work
found favor in England, where Sir Walter Scott befriended Irving.

[Sidenote: Polar expedition]

[Sidenote: Cochrane in Chilean service]

In England, too, it was a period of new industrial and colonial expansion.
Following the unsuccessful polar expeditions of the previous year,
Lieutenant Franklin undertook his second search for the northwest passage,
and a similar expedition, under Perry and Liddon, set out for Arctic
waters. In India, where the Sikhs under Runjeet Singh were engaged in their
great conquest of Cashmere, a British settlement was established in
Singapore. British supremacy at sea received its tribute in an invitation
from the Chileans to Sir Thomas Cochrane to command their new navy. After
their victory on the Maypo, the patriot leaders of Chile had set to work to
create a navy for their country. The British ship "Cumberland" was
purchased in London, and renamed the "San Martin." Within a few months she
captured the "Maria Isabella" from the Spanish. The prize was taken to
Valparaiso, remounted, and renamed the "O'Higgins." To these ships were
added the "Galvarino," "Araucano," "Interpodo," and the "Independencia."
With the "O'Higgins" for a flagship, Cochrane took this squadron up and
down the coast of South America, harrying the Spanish sea-ports everywhere.

[Sidenote: The "Six Acts"]

[Sidenote: Birth of Victoria]

In England, meanwhile, there was renewed agitation for Parliamentary
reforms. Henry Grattan in Parliament moved for a Committee of the Whole
House to consider the laws excluding Catholics from public offices. His
motion was defeated by a narrow vote of 243 against 241. Instead of this
reform the British Government, falling in line with the reactionary
measures of the Continental governments, passed through Parliament the
so-called "Six Acts" for the prevention and punishment of sedition in
England. To latter-day Englishmen this year is principally noted for the
birth of Queen Victoria. The little princess, the daughter of Edward, Duke
of Kent, son of George the Third and Maria Louisa Victoria of Saxe-Coburg,
a sister of Leopold I. of Belgium, was born at Kensington Palace, and was
named Alexandrina Victoria.

[Sidenote: Schopenhauer]

Germans of the present day remember this year for the appearance of
Schopenhauer's great philosophic work "The World, as Will and Idea"--"Die
Welt als Wille und Vorstellung." Schopenhauer, in this book, laid down the
doctrine that the universe, and therefore human life as such, is governed
by the conflicting principles of the ungoverned will and of the
unattainable ideal. The true solution of life, he held, was to be found in
subjecting brute will to the intellectual force of the ideal.

[Sidenote: Assassination of Kotzebue]

Schopenhauer's book at that time passed almost unnoticed. The educated
classes of Germany were in too much of a ferment over the recent police
restrictions inflicted upon the universities and public press. By this time
it had become well known what part Czar Alexander had played at the
Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. A vehement outcry arose at the universities
against the interference of foreigners in German affairs. The wrath of the
Liberals turned against August von Kotzebue, the prolific playwright, who
held the office of Russian agent in central Germany. Kotzebue conducted a
weekly newspaper at Mannheim in which he inveighed against the German
national movement of the day, and ridiculed the patriotic eccentricities of
the students. Having himself studied at Jena, Kotzebue was denounced by the
students there as a traitor. He was believed to be responsible for the
Czar's conversion from liberal ideas to reactionary principles. This belief
cost Kotzebue his life. One Sand, a theological student at Jena, noted for
piety and patriotic ardor, formed a fanatical resolution to do away with
this enemy of the country. An extract from Sand's diary, written on the eve
of his last New Year's day, reveals the character of the man: "I meet the
last day of this year in an earnest festal spirit, knowing well that the
Christmas which I have celebrated will be my last. If our strivings are to
result in anything, if the cause of mankind is to succeed in our
fatherland, if all is not to be forgotten, all our enthusiasm spent in
vain, the evil doer, the traitor, the corrupter of youth must die. Until I
have executed this, I have no peace; and what can comfort me until I know
that I have with upright will set my life at stake? O God, I pray only for
the right clearness and courage of soul, that in that last supreme hour I
may not be false to myself." On March 23, Sand sought out Baron Kotzebue in
the midst of his family and stabbed him to the heart. Then he turned the
dagger against himself. Unfortunately Sand recovered from his wounds, and
thus lived to die on the scaffold.

[Sidenote: Retaliatory measures]

[Sidenote: German liberals persecuted]

The mad deed was followed by the worst possible results for Germany.
Minister Hardenberg, when he heard of the murder of Kotzebue, declared that
a Prussian Constitution had now been rendered impossible. Metternich, who
was then in Rome, instantly drew up a scheme for further repressive
measures and summoned the ministers of the various German States for a
meeting at Carlsbad. "By the help of God," wrote Metternich, "I hope to
defeat the German revolution, just as I vanquished the conqueror of the
world. The revolutionists thought me far away, because I was five hundred
leagues off. They deceived themselves; I have been in the midst of them,
and now I am striking my blows." A number of innocent persons were arrested
in various parts of Germany under utterly unwarrantable circumstances. The
houses of professors were searched and private papers were seized. Jahn,
the founder of the popular Gymnastic schools, was arrested in Berlin. De
Wette, a professor of theology at the University of Berlin, had to flee to
Switzerland on account of a letter of sympathy addressed by him to Sand's
mother. With him Oken, the great naturalist, and Corres, the pamphleteer,
became exiles in Switzerland. Professor Fries lost his chair at Jena; the
poet Arndt was suspended at Bonn, and his private papers, in garbled form,
were published by the government. Many of the younger professors,
accompanied by their favorite students, emigrated to America.

[Sidenote: Convention of Carlsbad]

[Sidenote: Police censors appointed]

[Sidenote: Binzer's poem]

During August the German ministers met at Carlsbad. Their conferences, in
the memory of the German people, are justly associated with the suppression
of intellectual freedom for a whole generation. It was ordered that in
every State within the German federation a strict censorship should be
established over all publications. Within fifteen days an inquisitorial
commission was called together at Mainz to investigate the students'
societies at the universities. The commission was empowered to arrest any
subject in any German State. Special police commissioners were appointed at
the universities, whose duty it was to keep a strict eye on the drift of
the professor's teachings. Any professor or student expelled from a
university was not to be employed by any other German government. The
students' societies were suppressed, at least to all outward appearance.
The poet Binzer wrote a defiant song ending with the lines:

  The Spirit liveth in us all,
  For God is still our stronghold.

[Sidenote: Resignation of Wilhelm Humboldt]

[Sidenote: South German liberalism]

So far was repression carried in Prussia that out of 203 students arrested
for wearing black-red-yellow ribbons, no less than 94 were condemned to
death. Wilhelm von Humboldt, the best and most liberal of Prussian
Ministers during the first half of the nineteenth century, resigned his
portfolio in disgust. The zeal with which the Prussian Government accepted
these measures made it useless for the minor German States to offer much
opposition. Yet they formed the only remaining bulwark against
Metternich's restrictive policy. In spite of his strenuous opposition, the
rulers of Bavaria and Baden granted to their subjects constitutional forms
of government. Representative assemblies with lower and upper houses, after
the manner of the English Parliament, were established. In Wurtemberg,
serfdom was abolished, and a constitution was published a few days before
the enrolment of the decrees of Carlsbad.

[Sidenote: Laennec's stethoscope]

In France, Dr. Laennec published his epoch-making work "Traite
d'Auscultation Mediate," the result of his recent experiments in listening
to human heart-beats and lung respirations through a hollow cylinder.
Various names were given to the instrument until Laennec decided to call it
"stethoscope," the name it has ever since retained. Laennec's contributions
to the study of diseases of the lungs, of the heart and of the abdominal
organs may be said to have laid the foundation of modern clinical medicine.

[Sidenote: Decazes Prime Minister]

[Sidenote: The Gregoire episode]

[Sidenote: Troubles in Spain]

Parliamentary government in France worked none too smoothly. In the
Chambers the rise of the independent party and anti-Bourbon faction caused
the Duc de Richelieu to resign. When the news of Kotzebue's assassination
reached Paris, the Comte d'Artois remarked exultingly to the king: "Well,
brother, you see what they are driving us to." Louis XVIII. intrusted to
his favorite, Decazes, the formation of a new Cabinet. Decazes found it
difficult to select competent men for the various portfolios. His Cabinet,
when finally brought together, lacked internal unity and outward support.
Its career was early imperilled by the untoward election of Bishop Gregoire
of Grenoble, one of the regicides, to the Chamber of Deputies. This popular
manifestation, though sufficiently explained by the sterling public
qualities of the bishop himself, created the utmost apprehension among the
Royalists. Decazes had to bend to the storm, and the election of Gregoire
was declared null and void by the Ministerial majority in the Chambers. The
French Royalists next professed to find cause for apprehension in Spain.
Danger of war with the United States, before the cession of Florida, had
caused King Ferdinand of Spain to assemble an army at Cadiz to embark for
America. It was now proposed to send these troops to South America to quell
the revolutionary movements there. The return of a number of soldiers
stricken with yellow fever in the colonies filled the troops at Cadiz with
consternation. The common soldiers, lying in squalor and inaction at their
barracks, came to regard their expected order of embarkation as a sentence
of death. Their officers plotted with the secret societies in Cadiz and
neighboring towns. Abisbas, the commandant at Cadiz, to safeguard his own
interests pretended to encourage these plots. Then, convinced of their
ultimate failure, he arrested the principal leaders by a stratagem and
hurried to Madrid to reveal all and claim credit for saving the crown. The
ringleaders were imprisoned and the troops were distributed into
cantonments. As it turned out this only served to foment the growing spirit
of dissatisfaction throughout Spain.




1820


[Sidenote: Spanish military revolt]

[Sidenote: Riego's plight]

New Year's Day was fixed for the outbreak of revolt by the revolutionists
of Spain. The chosen leaders were Riego, Cabazes and Quiroga. It was
arranged that Quiroga, who was held in light confinement at Medina, east of
Cadiz, should gather the battalions outside of Cadiz, throw himself into
the city, and there await the co-operation of his fellow conspirators.
Riego with a band of chosen men was to pounce upon the military
headquarters at Arcos, and to arrest the general officers before they could
interfere. Accordingly, Riego, on the first day of January, proclaimed the
Constitution of 1812, and, falling upon headquarters, seized the general
officers and rallied the men to his standard. Quiroga was less successful.
After gaining possession of San Fernando at the eastern point of the
peninsula of Leon, he failed to get into Cadiz. The commandant closed the
gates against him, and the troops within gave no sign of defection. By the
time Riego arrived, there were but 5,000 insurgents wherewith to overcome
the strong garrison and fortifications of Cadiz. Leaving Quiroga before
Cadiz, Riego set himself to raise the people of the surrounding towns. He
was received with kindness, but the obvious weakness of his force
discouraged others from joining him. Strong forces were sent in pursuit,
and the insurgents were compelled to march back and forth through the
country to escape their pursuers. At Cordova, Riego was made to realize
that the game was lost. The soldiers of the government were upon him, and
he had only some two hundred followers left. The little band took to the
mountains and there dispersed.

[Sidenote: Spread of the revolt]

The revolt, despite its miserable end, was followed by widespread results.
The example of a bold stroke had been given, and the weakness of the
government had been exposed. While Riego's followers were still hunted from
place to place, the soldiers and citizens of Corona together declared for
the Constitution. The revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and thence
along the coast towns of Galicia.

[Sidenote: Cochrane's exploit]

[Sidenote: Abisbas' treachery]

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand succumbs]

In South America, Cochrane in a brilliant action took the Spanish
stronghold of Valdivia, held to be a Gibraltar in strength. King Ferdinand
in Madrid was terrified. From all points of Spain the commandants wrote
that they could not answer for their garrisons. Abisbas was ordered to
return to Cadiz with reinforcements. On leaving Madrid he boasted to the
king that he knew how to deal with rebels. By the time he reached Ocana,
early in March, he himself proclaimed the Constitution. The news of
Abisbas' defection created consternation in Madrid. On the night of March
6, the king convoked his Council of State. On the morrow he issued a
summons for the Cortes. This was not enough. Crowds gathered in the streets
and clamored for the Constitution. A report that the guards were on the
point of going over to the people brought the king around. From the balcony
of the royal palace Ferdinand announced his readiness to take the oath to
the Constitution. The next day was spent in riotous rejoicing. The prison
of the Inquisition was sacked and all political prisoners were liberated.
On the following day the mob broke into the gates and gardens of the royal
palace. The members of the old municipal council entered the royal private
chamber and called for a fulfilment of the king's public promise. Ferdinand
accepted the inevitable under a smiling exterior, and swore an oath of
fidelity to the Constitution of 1812. A provisional Junta took charge of
affairs until the new Cortes should be convened.

[Sidenote: Duc de Berry assassinated]

The news of the Spanish revolution astounded Europe. In France a fanatic by
the name of Louvel deemed the moment come to strike at the reigning house
of France. Louvel had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. After the Hundred
Days he dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princes with a settled project
of murder. The heir-presumptive to the French crown was the Duc de Berry.
If he died without a son the elder Bourbon line was bound to become extinct
as a reigning house. On the night of February 13, Louvel attacked the Duc
de Berry at the entrance of the opera house and plunged a knife into his
heart. The Duchess was covered with her husband's blood. That night Duc de
Berry died beseeching forgiveness for the man who had killed him. King
Louis XVIII. himself closed the eyes of his nephew.

[Sidenote: Fall of Decazes' Ministry]

The assassination of the Duc de Berry involved the ruin of the Ministry of
Decazes. The ultra-royalists in their frenzy of grief and indignation
charged their chief opponent with complicity. Clausel de Coussergues, a
member of the Court of Cassation, moved the impeachment of Minister Decazes
in the Chambers as an accomplice in the assassination. The King himself
felt menaced by the unwarranted accusation. "The Royalists give me the
finishing stroke," said he; "they know that the policy of M. Decazes is
also mine, and they accuse him of assassinating my nephew." Yet he had to
abandon his favorite to the violent entreaties of the Comte d'Artois and
the Duchesse de Angouleme. Decazes was permitted to retire, and set out for
London with his new titles of Duke and Ambassador to the Court of St.
James. Richelieu was recalled to the Ministry. The Duchesse de Berry
retired to Sicily.

[Sidenote: Rise of the Carbonari]

[Sidenote: Neapolitan military revolt]

[Sidenote: Revolution in Naples]

[Sidenote: Bourbon duplicity]

In Naples and Sicily the recent events in Spain and France exerted a
powerful influence over the minds of the people. In southern Italy the
secret society of the Carbonari had become a power in the land. The members
of this society, after the manner of Freemasons, took their name and the
symbolism of their rites from the calling of the charcoal burners. Since
the revolt against Bourbon tyranny in 1799, the Carbonari had played their
part as revolutionary conspirators. By the year 1820 it was believed that
one person out of every twenty-five in Naples belonged to the society. To
offset their hidden power, the government encouraged the foundation of a
rival society, known as the Calderari, or Braziers. This only made matters
worse. After the success of the revolution in Spain, the head lodge of the
Carbonari in Salerno issued orders for a rising in June. Later the date was
postponed. A score of Carbonari serving in the ranks of a cavalry regiment
at Nola, persuaded one of the officers, Lieutenant Morelli, to head a
revolt in favor of a constitutional government. On July 2, Morelli marched
out with a squadron of 150 men, and proclaimed for the Constitution. Only
one trooper refused to follow his standard. The others rode along the road
to Avellino and were received with enthusiasm all along the way. The
country was ripe for revolt. At Avellino the commandant with all his
garrison and the Bishop with the townspeople gave them a magnificent
reception. The news of the revolt spread like wildfire throughout the
kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Everywhere the Carbonari declared in its
favor. Before the government had taken a single step, the Constitution was
generally proclaimed and joyfully accepted by the populace. From Naples the
King sent General Carrascosa to negotiate with the insurgents. In the
meanwhile General Pepe, himself a Carbonaro of high rank, hastened to
Avellino and placed himself at the head of the revolution. On July 6, the
King published an edict promising a constitution within eight days, and
then, feigning illness, committed the royal authority to his son, the Duke
of Calabria. The Carbonari, recalling the fact that the King, in order to
preserve his contingent rights to the Spanish crown, had but recently
helped to sign the Spanish Constitution of 1812, insisted that this same
Constitution should be proclaimed for Naples. Old King Ferdinand yielded
and signed an edict to that effect. General Pepe and Morelli, at the head
of the garrison of Avellino, and the national guards of Naples,
triumphantly entered the city with public honors, and were received by the
Duke of Calabria, in his capacity as viceroy. On July 13, the King in
person swore to support the Constitution. Standing before the altar in the
royal chapel, he raised his eyes to the crucifix and prayed that the
vengeance of God might fall upon him if ever he broke his oath. Immediately
afterward he wrote to the Emperors of Austria and Russia, declaring that
his conduct on this occasion was a mere farce and that he regarded his
obligations as null and void.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: End of Lisbon regency]

The contagion of Spain and Sicily proved too much for the people of
Portugal. The continued absence of the royal family in Brazil, and the
unwelcome prolongation of the British regency had long caused
dissatisfaction in Portugal. The feeling of discontent was deepened by
industrial and commercial distress which made the manifest prosperity of
Brazil seem all the more galling. Marshal Beresford, the English
commander-in-chief of the Portuguese army, was generally execrated for his
barbarous treatment of military conspirators. After the outbreak of the
Spanish revolution, the aspect of affairs became so threatening in Portugal
that Beresford set out for Rio Janeiro to induce the Princes of Braganza to
return to their Court in Lisbon. Before he could accomplish his purpose,
the government that he had left behind him was overthrown by the people. On
August 24, the city of Oporto rose against the regency. The officers of the
army, the magistrates, the priests and townspeople united in declaring
against the regency. They established a provisional Junta to govern in the
name of the King until the Cortes of Portugal could be convened to frame a
constitution. The authority of the regency in Oporto was lost without a
blow. The Junta immediately seized the reins of government, and began its
career by dismissing all English officers and paying the arrears of the
soldiers. In Lisbon the regency itself tried to stem the storm by giving
its formal approval to the measures of the Junta of Oporto. The troops of
Lisbon, however, would no longer recognize the authority of the government.
Within a fortnight the regency was deposed, and a Junta installed in its
place. Beresford was forbidden to return to Portugal. He went to England,
but found there that the British Ministry did not deem it advisable to
interfere further in the domestic affairs of Portugal. Dom Juan VI., in Rio
Janeiro, promised to return to Portugal and bestow on his subjects a
liberal constitution.

[Sidenote: British liberalism]

[Sidenote: Sale of Russian fleet]

In England, Lord Beresford's attempt to induce the government to suppress
the revolutionists of Portugal only served to strengthen the popular
antipathy that had grown up against the reactionary tendencies of the Holy
Alliance. Prior to this an attempt had been made to persuade England to
act as instrument of the Alliance by suppressing the rebellious colonies of
Spain in South America. At the last session of the Holy Alliance, the
envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper in which they suggested that
Wellington, as "the man of Europe," should go to Madrid to preside over a
negotiation between the Court of Spain and all the Ambassadors, regarding
the terms to be offered to the transatlantic States. If the colonies
continued rebellious, England's fleet was counted upon to reduce them to
submission. But the force of liberalism was too strong in England for any
British Minister to enter into such a scheme. Then it was that the Czar of
Russia sold a large part of the Russian fleet to Spain. To Englishmen, who
had seen these same ships in their harbors at the time they were held as
hostages by England, this action gave but little concern. The scandal that
followed in Spain was anticipated in England. On their arrival at Cadiz,
the Russian ships were found to be useless rotten hulks.

[Sidenote: Death of George III.]

[Sidenote: Queen Caroline's trial]

[Sidenote: Death of the Queen]

Another more trying scandal engrossed public attention in England. On
January 29, old King George III. had at last sunk into his grave. His son,
George IV., became king, and began his rule with the same Ministry under
Lord Liverpool that had served him as Prince Regent. The new king's first
public act was to call for a bill for the divorce of his wife, Caroline of
Brunswick. The Cabinet refused to favor such a bill. On April 23,
Parliament met. The King sent "a green bag" to each House of Parliament,
containing a mass of testimony and accusations concerning the queen's
conduct with her Italian chamberlain, Pergami. On June 6, Queen Caroline
arrived from Italy. Having been refused passage on a royal ship, she
chartered a vessel of her own. This bold step was taken to imply innocence.
She was received with great popular demonstrations in her favor. Before a
secret committee of Parliament, Queen Caroline offset the King's charges
against her by laying stress on his own well-known failings as a husband.
On July 5, Lord Liverpool introduced a bill of "Pains and Penalties" to
dissolve the marriage of Queen Caroline. Her trial was taken up by the
House of Lords, where she was defended by Lord Brougham. To this day the
proceedings of the trial are remembered as one of the most outrageous
scandals in England. The feelings thereby engendered in the people have
been immortalized in the trenchant writings of Thackeray. Before the trial
was concluded, Lord Liverpool's bill was brought up for the third time in
Parliament. It passed by a majority of a few votes. With so slender an
indorsement, the Ministry had cause to tremble for its existence. Lord
Liverpool prevailed upon the King to recede from his extreme position, and,
succeeding in this, moved for the abandonment of the bill. The trial was
quashed. Queen Caroline died shortly afterward.

[Sidenote: The Missouri Compromise]

[Sidenote: Cabinet in a quandary]

In America, public feeling was no less excited. The occasion for this was
the first serious clash of the Northern and Southern factions of the United
States over what was known as the Missouri Compromise. On February 18, the
Missouri Compromise bill passed the Senate, and on March 2 the House. It
admitted Missouri as a slave State, and prohibited slavery north of
parallel 36 deg. 30', the southern line of Missouri. Henry Clay declared that
it settled the slavery question "forever." The bill went to the President.
There was still another compromise, and that was in the Cabinet. The
President asked advice on two points. The first point was whether Congress
had a Constitutional right to prohibit slavery in a Territory. The Cabinet
agreed that the right existed. Then the question arose whether the section
prohibiting slavery "forever" referred only to the territorial condition,
or whether it also applied when the Territory became a State. The Cabinet,
with the exception of Adams, agreed that "forever" applied only to the
territorial condition; Adams held that "forever" meant literally forever,
in State as well as in Territory. In order to escape this dilemma it was
proposed that the question of "forever," as relating to States, should be
avoided; and that the only question should be, whether the section
prohibiting slavery in the Territories forever was Constitutional. The
order of proceeding was reversed; Mr. Adams was to reply in the affirmative
without giving his reasons, while the others were to explain in writing
that the provision was Constitutional; but "forever" meant only while the
territorial condition existed. With this understanding the bill was signed.
It is plain now that in the unsettled point the whole pith and meaning of
the Missouri Compromise was contained, as the country learned fully and
decisively thirty-five years afterward.

[Sidenote: Monroe elected President]

New issues then came to the front--protection, internal improvements, and
recognition of the South American republics. Presently, in order to
preserve the balance of power between slavery and freedom, it was enacted
that Maine was to be admitted on March 15, making twelve free and twelve
slave holding States. A bill was passed pronouncing the maritime slave
trade piracy. On October 20, Spain ratified the treaty ceding Florida.
Congress reassembled in November. James Monroe and John Quincy Adams were
the opposing candidates for the Presidency. Monroe received 231 electoral
votes; Adams received one from a New Hampshire elector who voted in
sympathy with a popular sentiment that Washington should stand alone in the
high honor of a unanimous choice.

[Sidenote: Quinine]

In this year the great fever drug quinine was first clearly separated and
identified by Drs. Pelletier and Caventou, who were spurred on to their
labors by the previous experiments with the drug by Drs. Gomez and Lambert.
In its crude form the bark of the chinchona tree had been used for its
medical properties since times immemorial.

[Sidenote: Homeopathy]

It was about this time that the German physician Hahnemann's theory of
homeopathy caused general discussion among medical practitioners and
laymen. Hahnemann's first thesis was that many diseases could most quickly
be eradicated by similar effects--fever with fever, poison with
anti-poison. This theory of "like with like"--the Greek homoia
homoiois--was accordingly named by him homeopathy. It was most fully
expressed in his "Dogma of Rational Healing" and in the later treatise
"Chronic Ailments and their Homeopathic Cure." These books created such a
widespread sensation that they were at once translated into several
languages and ran through a great number of editions. As a matter of
course, Hahnemann's peculiar theories were violently combated by his fellow
practitioners.

[Sidenote: Hydropathy]

Almost at the same time with the rise of the new science of homeopathy came
Vincenz Priessnitz's innovation of hydropathy or water cure. He established
his first sanitarium at Grafenberg, his birthplace, and in the face of
vehement medical opposition soon won government recognition for his
sanitarium. Similar water-cure establishments were erected by many
imitators and followers in Germany and elsewhere.

[Sidenote: Convention of Troppau]

[Sidenote: Intervention in Naples]

Late in the year Emperor Alexander of Russia and Metternich came together
to settle on the counter strokes to be delivered against the revolutionists
of Spain and southern Italy. When Metternich first heard of the fall of
absolute government in Naples he was dismayed. Gentz, who saw him at that
time, has left this record: "Prince Metternich went to-day to inform the
Emperor of the sad events in Naples. As long as I know him I have never
seen him so upset by any event." Metternich had reason to feel alarmed. A
revolution in Naples was almost sure to be followed by an Italian uprising
in the Austrian possessions of Venice and an insurrection in the Papal
States. Had Metternich felt free to follow his own devices, he would
forthwith have marched an Austrian army into southern Italy to put an end
to the troubles there. With all his exasperation he did not feel free to
cut loose from joint action with the Czar and with the other sovereigns of
Europe. Thus it came that the summer was spent in arranging for another
conference of the allied monarchs. They met on October 20, at Troppau in
Moravia. The Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia
received one another in state. The envoys of England and France were found
to be in accord against armed intervention in southern Italy. The other
powers determined to proceed on their course without them. Metternich's
diplomatic dealings with the Czar were greatly hampered by the clever
intrigues of Count Capodistrias, Alexander's foreign minister. For once
Metternich found himself matched by a diplomat even more subtle than
himself. In the end, he prevailed over Capodistrias sufficiently to
overcome Alexander's scruples against harsh measures in Naples. It was
determined to invite King Ferdinand to meet the sovereigns at Leibach, in
Austria, and to address a summons to the Neapolitans commanding them to
abandon their constitution, under threat of immediate invasion. Accordingly
a note was issued from Troppau to all the courts of Europe, embodying the
doctrine of federative intervention, as applied to Naples.

[Sidenote: King Ferdinand's duplicity]

As soon as King Ferdinand received the summons he prepared to leave Naples.
The populace became aroused, and angry crowds surrounded the palace.
Ferdinand was not allowed to leave Naples until he had once more sworn on
his honor to maintain the constitution borrowed from Spain. The King took
this oath as readily as he did the other. Then he journeyed northward. Half
way, at Leghorn, he sent letters to each of the five principal sovereigns
of Europe declaring his last declaration just as null and void as his
previous perjuries. His double-dealing was rather too much even for the
Holy Alliance. As Gentz, the secretary of the Congress, expressed himself
in private: "The conduct of this wretched sovereign, since the beginning of
his troubles, has been nothing but a tissue of weaknesses and lies. Happily
they will remain secret. No Cabinet will care to draw them from the
graveyard of its archives. Till then there is not much harm done."

[Sidenote: Benjamin West]

Benjamin West, the celebrated American-English artist, died at London in
his eighty-second year. At the opening of the Eighteenth Century, West was
in the forefront of the agitation that grew out of his contested succession
to Sir Joshua Reynolds as president of the Royal Academy. Wearied with
these quarrels he visited Paris, where he studied the newly pillaged
masterpieces at the Louvre. He resigned from the Royal Academy, but was
almost unanimously re-elected. It was then that he painted his famous
"Christ Healing the Sick." His later works failed to attain the success of
his earlier historical paintings. When West died, his reputation had
declined appreciably, still a public funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral was
accorded to him, a unique honor for an American.




1821


[Sidenote: Congress of Leibach]

[Sidenote: Naples under duress]

The Congress of Leibach met in January. It was attended by the
representatives of Russia, Austria, Prussia, England, France, Sardinia and
Modena. When King Ferdinand of Naples arrived he was received by the
Emperors of Russia and Austria in person. It was predetermined that
absolute government in Naples should be restored by Austrian arms. The only
problem remaining to diplomacy was to put a respectable face on King
Ferdinand's dishonor. Capodistrias offered to make up some fictitious
correspondence in which Ferdinand was proudly to uphold the constitution
which he had sworn to support, and to yield protestingly to the powers only
after actual threats of war. The device was rejected as too transparent.
Moreover, the old king scarcely cared how his conduct appeared to his
subjects. A letter was sent in his name to his son, the acting-viceroy,
stating that the Powers were determined not to tolerate the order of things
sprung from revolution, and that certain securities for peace would have to
be given. The reference to securities meant the occupation of the country
by an Austrian army. The letter reached Naples on February 9. Three days
before the Austrian troops had received their orders to cross the Po.

[Sidenote: Battle of Rieti]

[Sidenote: Revolt of Piedmont]

The invading army of Austria was 50,000 strong. The Neapolitan soldiers
numbered a little more than 40,000, of whom 12,000 were in Sicily engaged
at Palermo in suppressing a counter revolution for home rule. At the first
encounter at Rieti in the Papal territory, the Neapolitans under General
Pepe were utterly routed. Their forces melted away, as they did when Murat
made his last stroke for Italy and Napoleon. Not a single strong point was
defended. On March 24, the Austrians entered Naples. Then came a moment of
danger. Rebellion broke out in Piedmont, and an attempt was made to unite
the troops of Piedmont with those of Lombardy. The King of Piedmont rather
than sign the Spanish Constitution abdicated his throne. On the refusal of
the King's brother, Charles Felix, to recognize a constitution, his cousin
Charles Albert of Carignano was made the regent and commander of the
troops. He advanced so cautiously that the conspirators at Milan dared not
follow suit with a revolution of their own. In the meanwhile the Czar had
ordered 100,000 Russians to march in the direction of the Adriatic. The
Austrian forces advanced westward from the Venetian strongholds, and,
brushing aside all resistance, entered Piedmont.

[Sidenote: End of Italian revolution]

[Sidenote: Silvio Pellico]

The victory of absolutism in Italy was complete. Courts-martial sat all
over Italy. Morelli, the officer who had led out the so-called sacred band
of Nola, was shot. His followers were expressly excluded from all amnesty
acts. An attempted insurrection in Sicily cost the conspirators their
lives. Hundreds of persons were cast into prison, or were marched off to
distant fortresses in Austria. It was at this time that Silvio Pellico, the
author of the famous "Prison Records," was sent to the dungeon of
Spielberg. Then began that long stream of fugitives to England and America.

[Sidenote: Revolt in Brazil]

[Sidenote: Mexican independence]

[Sidenote: San Martin's Campaign]

The Holy Alliance, sitting at Leibach, thought the time was ripe to
pronounce its anathema against all peoples seeking their liberties
elsewhere than in the grace of their legitimate sovereigns. Yet the spirit
of revolt was abroad, and its flames continued to flicker up at widely
separated points. On February 26, the Portuguese troops in Brazil rose in
revolt. The king, still residing at Rio Janeiro, was compelled to appoint a
new Ministry pledged to give to both Portugal and Brazil a new
representative system. In Mexico, General Iturbide, at the same time,
issued a pronunciamiento, containing his so-called "Plan of Iguala," which
proposed independence for Mexico under a Spanish Bourbon prince. Several
rebel leaders acquiesced in this, and forced the Spanish viceroy to resign.
Juan O'Donoju became acting-viceroy. He signed a treaty with Iturbide
virtually accepting the plan. The people of Buenos Ayres profited by the
military troubles in Brazil to throw in their lot with that of the
Argentine Republic. Their popular idol, San Martin, meanwhile was leading
his victorious troops from Chile into Peru. Lima, one of the greatest
Spanish strongholds in South America, was threatened by the revolutionists.

[Sidenote: War in Annam]

[Sidenote: Taouk-Wang]

At the other end of the earth, the new force of national feeling showed
itself in popular uprisings. In distant Annam the death of Emperor
Gia-Long, followed by a bloody struggle for the succession between his
sons, incited the people to a national demonstration against the
encroachments of the French in Tonquin. In China the new Emperor Taouk-Wang
was enthroned. He was the first to throw his whole personal influence
against the evils of the opium trade inflicted upon China by English
merchants since 1800.

[Sidenote: Philike Hetairia]

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti]

[Sidenote: Vladimiresco]

In Greece and in the Balkans the people rose against the yoke of Turkey.
The plan of the Philike Hetairia--_i.e._ Patriotic Association--was to
begin their revolution on the Danube, so as to induce Russia to take a hand
in their favor. They believed that Capodistrias, the Prime Minister of
Russia, himself a Greek, would win the Czar to their cause. Unfortunately
for them, Metternich's influence proved stronger than that of the Greek
Minister. Capodistrias deemed it advisable to publish a pamphlet warning
his countrymen against any rash step. Failing to win the open support of
Capodistrias, the Hetairists turned to Prince Alexander Ypsilanti, a Greek
exile serving in the Russian army. Ypsilanti agreed to raise the standard
of revolt in Moldavia. It was arranged that Theodore Vladimiresco, a
Roumanian who had served in the Russian army, was to call his countrymen to
arms against the Turk. Then the Greeks were to step in, and the help of
Russia was to be invoked.

[Sidenote: Rising of Roumania]

In February, Vladimiresco proclaimed the abolition of feudal servitude in
Roumania, and marched with a horde of peasants upon Bucharest. Early in
March, the Greek troops at Galatz, let loose by their commander, Karavias,
massacred the Turkish population of that town.

Ypsilanti, waiting on the Russian frontier, crossed the Pruth and appeared
at Jassee with a few hundred followers. A proclamation was issued, calling
upon all Christians to rise against the Crescent. Ypsilanti went so far as
to declare that "a great European power," meaning Russia, was "pledged to
support him." The Greek Hospodar of Jassee immediately surrendered the
government, and supplied a large sum of money. Troops to the number of
2,000 gathered around Ypsilanti. The road to the Danube lay open.

[Sidenote: Ypsilanti repudiated]

[Sidenote: Death of Vladimiresco]

[Sidenote: Georgakis]

Ypsilanti wasted valuable time loitering at Jassee. A month was lost before
he reached Bucharest. He delayed partly on account of his expectations of
Russian help in response to a letter he had written to the Czar. The delay
proved fatal to him. The Czar, now wholly under the influence of
Metternich, sent a stern answer from Leibach. Ypsilanti was dismissed from
the Russian service. The Russian consul at Jassee issued a manifesto that
Russia repudiated and condemned Ypsilanti's enterprise. The Patriarch of
Constantinople was made to issue a ban of excommunication against the
rebels. In an official note of the Powers, the Congress of Leibach branded
the Greek revolt as a token of the same spirit which had produced the
revolution of Italy and Spain. Turkish troops crossed the Danube. The
Roumanian peasants, seeing no help from Russia, held aloof. Vladimiresco
plotted against the Greeks. It was in vain that brave Georgakis captured
the traitor at his own headquarters and carried him to his death in the
Greek camp. Ypsilanti was defeated in his first encounter with the Turks.
He retired before them toward the Austrian frontier. In the end he fled
across the border and was promptly made a prisoner in Austria. His
followers dearly sold their lives. At Skuleni, 400 of them under Georgakis
made a last stand on the Pruth. They were surrounded by ten times their
number. Georgakis refused to surrender. Bidding his followers flee, at the
moment when the Turks broke in the doors, he blew himself up in the
monastery of Skuleni.

[Sidenote: Revolt of Morea]

[Sidenote: Gregorios hanged]

At the news of Ypsilanti's uprising in Moldavia the entire Greek population
of the Morea rose against the Turk. From the outset, the Moreotes waged a
war of extermination. They massacred all Turks, men, women and children.
Within a few weeks the open country was swept clear of its Mohammedan
population. The fugitive Turks were invested within the walls of
Tripolitza, Patras, and other strong towns. Sultan Mahmud took prompt
vengeance. A number of innocent Greeks at Constantinople were strangled by
his executioners. The fury of the Moslem was let loose on the Infidel. All
Greek settlements along the Bosphorus were burned. But the crowning stroke
came on Easter Sunday, the most sacred day of the Greek Church. The
Patriarch of Constantinople, while he was celebrating service, was summoned
away by the dragoman of the Porte. At the order of the Sultan he was haled
before a hastily assembled synod and there degraded from his office as a
traitor. The synod was commanded to elect his successor. While the
trembling prelates did their bidding, Patriarch Gregorios was led out in
his sacred robes and hanged at the gate of his palace. His body remained
hanging throughout the Easter celebration, and was then given to the Jews
to be dragged through the streets and cast into the Bosphorus. A similar
fate befell the Greek archbishops of Salonica, Tirnovo, and Adrianople. The
body of Gregorios floating in the sea was picked up by a Greek ship and
carried to Odessa. This return to Christian soil of the remains of the
Patriarch was hailed as a miracle in Russia. Gregorios was solemnly buried
by the Russian Government as a martyr.

[Sidenote: Russia aroused]

[Sidenote: The Czar found wanting]

If the will of the Russian people had been carried out, the Russian army
and nation would have avenged the murder of their high-priest by an
immediate war upon the Turks. Strogonov, the Russian Ambassador at
Constantinople, at once proposed to his diplomatic colleagues to join him
in calling for warships to protect the Christians there. Lord Stranford,
the British Ambassador, refused to accede to this proposition.
Single-handed, Strogonov presented an ultimatum to the Sultan demanding the
restoration of Christian churches and the Porte's protection for Christian
worship. A written answer was exacted within eight days. Encouraged by
England's attitude, the Sultan ignored Strogonov's requests. On July 27,
the Russian Ambassador left Constantinople. To the amazement of his
moujiks, the Czar did not declare war. The councils of Prince Metternich
prevailed. With the help of the representatives of England, Metternich
persuaded the Czar to view the rebellion of Greece as a mere unfortunate
disturbance. Any countenance of it, he argued, would imperil the peace of
Europe.

[Sidenote: Rising of the Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ali Pasha]

[Sidenote: Moreote campaign]

[Sidenote: Petrobei]

[Sidenote: Kolokotrones]

[Sidenote: Maurokordatos]

[Sidenote: Massacre of Navarino]

[Sidenote: Sack of Tripolitza]

The murder of the Greek Patriarch was followed by risings of the Greeks
throughout continental Greece and the Archipelago. Here, as in the Morea,
the cause of Greek freedom was disgraced by massacres, and indignities to
Turkish women. The Sultan's troops, led by able commanders, retaliated in
kind. Khurshid, with a large Turkish army, besieged Janina. He held firmly
to his task, even after his whole household fell into the hands of the
Moreotes. The Greeks in Thessaly failed to rise, and thus the border
provinces were saved for the Ottoman Empire. The risings in remoter
districts were soon quelled. In Epirus, Ali Pasha, the Albanian chieftain,
was surrounded by overwhelming numbers and lost his life. On the Macedonian
coast the Hetairist revolt, in which the monks of Mount Athos took part,
proved abortive. Moreover, the desultory warfare on water carried on by the
islanders of Hydra, Spetza, and Psara served only to annoy the Turks. The
real campaign was waged in the Morea, where Tripolitza, the seat of the
Turkish Government, was besieged by the insurgents. Demetrios Ypsilanti,
Prince Alexander's brother, landed on the coast and was welcomed as a
leader by the peasants in arms. Three other leaders rose to prominence.
First, in the eyes of the people, came Petrobei, chief of the family of
Mauromichalis. Surrounded by his nine sons, this sturdy chieftain appeared
like one of the old Homeric kings. Second in popular favor was
Kolokotrones, a typical modern Clepht, cunning and treacherous, but a born
soldier. The ablest political leader was Maurokordatos, a man of some
breadth of view and foresight, but over-cautious as a general. The early
insurgent successes were marred by bad faith and gross savagery. On the
surrender of Navarino, in August, a formal capitulation was signed,
safeguarding the lives of the Turkish inhabitants. In the face of this
compact the victorious Greeks put men, women and children to the sword. Two
months later the Turkish garrison of Tripolitza, after sustaining a siege
of six months, began negotiations for surrender. In the midst of the truce,
the Greek soldiery got wind of a secret bargain of their leaders to extend
protection for private gain. In defiance of the officers, the peasant
soldiers stormed Tripolitza and scaled the walls. Then followed three days
of indiscriminate looting and carnage. By thousands, the Turks, with their
women and children, were slaughtered. Kolokotrones himself records how he
rode from the gateway to the citadel of Tripolitza, his horse's hoofs
touching nothing but human bodies.

[Sidenote: Philhellenism]

The Greek struggle for independence aroused conflicting emotions in Europe.
The passionate sympathy of the Russians rested wholly on their religious
bonds. The more enlightened Philhellenes of France and Germany affected to
see in this struggle a revival of the ancient Greek spirit that blazed
forth at Thermopylae and Marathon. For this same reason, perhaps, Metternich
and his colleagues in the Holy Alliance looked upon the Greek revolution
with an evil eye. Any cause espoused by the hot-headed liberals at the
universities in those days of itself became obnoxious to the reactionary
rulers of the German and Austrian states.

[Sidenote: Lord Byron's Greek lyrics]

The sympathy with the Greeks was most pronounced in England. There the
stirring lyrics of Lord Byron had reached the height of their popularity.
His songs of Greece and Greek freedom were justly regarded as among his
best. It was but a short time before this that the poet, to use his own
phrase, had awakened one morning to find himself famous. Now his Greek
songs were hailed by the whole world as classics. Notable among them were
the "Isles of Greece," embodied in the third canto of his "Don Juan" with
the famous stanza:

  The mountains look on Marathon--
    And Marathon looks on the sea;
  And musing there an hour alone
    I dreamed that Greece might still be free.

And the equally celebrated lines from "The Bride of Abydos":

  Know ye the land where the cypress and myrtle
    Are emblems of deeds that are done in their clime?
  Where the rage of the vulture, the love of the turtle,
    Now melt into sorrow, now madden to crime!

[Sidenote: Death of Keats]

[Sidenote: Byron's satire]

[Sidenote: Keats's work]

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of
John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius.
Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph
composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was
generally assumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his
anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the
"Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in
his "Don Juan":

  John Keats, who was killed off by one critique,
    Just as he really promised something great
  If not intelligible, without Greek
    Contrived to talk about the gods of late
  Much as they might have been supposed to speak.
    Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate;
      'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle,
      Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

As a matter of fact Keats died of consumption. The ravages of this disease
in his case were accelerated by his feverish passion for poetry, his love
affair with Fanny Brawne, financial embarrassments, and only to a slight
extent by the inevitable disappointment arising from adverse criticisms.
What Byron did for modern Greece in England, Keats may be said to have done
for ancient Greece. The beautiful songs of Greece, embodied in "Endymion"
and "Hyperion," no less than the enthusiastic odes and sonnets in praise of
Hellenic works of art, opened the eyes of many of the contemporaries of
Keats to the enduring beauties of Greece. It was in his exquisite "Ode to
a Grecian Urn," that Keats expressed his poetical master passion for
beauty:

  Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all
  Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

  [Illustration: LORD BYRON
    Painted by Maurin]

[Sidenote: "Adonais"]

Shortly after Keats's death appeared one of the most beautiful of Shelley's
longer poems--"Adonais," written as an elegy on the death of Keats:

  I weep for Adonais--he is dead.
  Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears
  Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
  And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
  To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
  And teach them thine own sorrow! Say. "With me
  Died Adonais; till the Future dares
  Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
  An echo and a light unto eternity."

[Sidenote: Wilhelm Meister]

[Sidenote: Rise of romantic literature]

[Sidenote: Victor Hugo]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Goethe's "Wilhelm
Meister's Wander Jahre," and of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's first long
poem, "Ruslan and Ludmilla." In this epic, written during Pushkin's early
banishment to Bessarabia, an old Russian theme of the heroic times of Kiev
was treated much after the manner of Byron's romantic examples. In France
the romantic period in literature was inaugurated by young Victor Hugo,
who, but the year before, had been crowned as "Maitre des jeux floraux" for
a prize poem on Henri IV. Now Chateaubriand, in his journal "Le
Conservateur," welcomed him as "Un enfant sublime." By his own romantic
followers Hugo was hailed as chief of their poetic "Bataillon Sacre."
During the same year the poet, then barely nineteen, married Mademoiselle
Foucher, a girl of fifteen.

[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon]

The most important event of the year for Frenchmen was the death of
Napoleon Bonaparte at Longwood, in St. Helena. He died on May 5, after
taking the holy sacrament. He left a last will with several codicils. In it
Napoleon made the following declarations:

[Sidenote: Napoleon's will]

"I die in the Apostolical and Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was
born more than fifty years ago. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on
the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved
so well. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria
Louisa. I retain for her, to the last moment, the most tender sentiments. I
beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet
environ his infancy. I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born
a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the
hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to
fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my
motto--_Everything for the French people_. I die prematurely, assassinated
by the English oligarchy and its tool. The English nation will not be slow
in avenging me. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France,
when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason
of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. I forgive them--may the
posterity of France forgive them as I do! I pardon Louis for the libel he
published in 1820; it is replete with false assertions and falsified
documents. I disavow the 'Manuscript of St. Helena,' and other works, under
the title of 'Maxims, Sayings,' etc., which persons have been pleased to
publish for the last six years. Such are not the rules which have guided my
life. I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried because that step
was essential to the safety, interest and honor of the French people, when
the Comte d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixty assassins
at Paris. Under similar circumstances I should act in the same way."

[Sidenote: The bequests]

To his son and immediate relatives, Napoleon left most of his personal
effects. Among his relatives and favorite followers he distributed a sum of
6,000,000 francs, left in the hands of his bankers at the time of his
flight from Paris; likewise the proceeds of a possible sale of his
confiscated crown jewels. Count Lavalette and the children of Labedoyere
were remembered with bequests of 100,000 and 50,000 francs, respectively.
The final clauses were:

"To be distributed among such proscribed persons as wander in foreign
countries, whether they be French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or
inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my
executors, one hundred thousand francs. To be distributed among those who
suffered amputation, or were severely wounded at Ligny or Waterloo, who may
be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors. The Guards
shall be paid double, those of the Island of Elba quadruple, two hundred
thousand francs."

[Sidenote: Cantillon remembered]

A curious bequest was that of 10,000 francs to Cantillon, a French
subaltern, who was tried and acquitted for the attempted assassination of
the Duke of Wellington in Paris on February 11, 1818. Napoleon thus
explained this bequest:

[Sidenote: Last fling at Wellington]

"Cantillon had as much right to assassinate that oligarchist as the latter
had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who
proposed this outrage, attempted to justify it by pleading the interest of
Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really assassinated that lord, would
have pleaded the same excuse, and been justified by the same motive--the
interest of France--to get rid of this general, who, moreover, by violating
the capitulation of Paris, had rendered himself responsible for the blood
of the martyrs Ney, Labedoyere, etc., and for the crime of having pillaged
the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties."

This last legacy was not paid until 1855, when Napoleon III. discharged it.

[Sidenote: Fall of Richelieu's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Villele Prime Minister]

Late in the year the Ministry of Duc de Richelieu succumbed to the
machinations of Comte d'Artois. Before his resignation, Richelieu
complained to the Count, reminding him of his promises of support at the
first formation of the Cabinet. "The fact is, my dear Duke," replied
Monsieur, "if you allow me to say so, you have taken my words too
literally. And then the circumstances at that time were so different." The
Prime Minister rose abruptly and sought out the King. "Monsieur has broken
his word of honor," he said, "he has broken his word as a gentleman." "What
would you have me do?" said Louis XVIII. "He conspired against Louis XVI.;
he conspires against me; he will conspire against himself." The explosion
of a barrel of gunpowder in the royal palace raised apprehensions of
another painful scene, like that preceding the fall of the Ministry of
Decazes. Richelieu resigned, and Villele took his place. Chateaubriand was
sent to London as Ambassador. While Parliamentary government in France
labored thus under the onslaughts of the Royalist plotters in the Chambers,
the so-called Era of Good Feeling in America was continued under the second
administration of President Monroe.

[Sidenote: Inauguration of Monroe]

[Sidenote: Missouri admitted to Statehood]

The 4th of March fell on a Sunday, and Monroe was the first President to be
inaugurated on the 5th. Missouri was admitted conditionally, and, on August
10, the President proclaimed its admission as the twenty-fourth State amid
a tempest of political excitement. The contest over the slavery question
was now supposed to be forever settled. In the debates of 1821, the House
stood firmly against Missouri's admission as a slave State, and the Senate
was equally determined that the colored citizens of other States should be
denied citizenship in Missouri if the people so desired. At last it came to
a conference committee. It was decided that the State should be admitted,
as soon as its Legislature would agree that the section of the Constitution
in question should not be construed as authorizing a law excluding any
citizens of other States from the immunities and privileges to which they
were entitled under the Constitution. The Legislature of Missouri gave this
pledge, but it remained open whether free negroes and mulattoes were
citizens in other States, and whether they were to be made citizens in
Missouri. In the admission of Missouri there was for the first time an
unmixed issue on the question of a free government or a slave-holding
government in the United States. Doubtful dealings on the part of the
Senators from Indiana and Illinois were followed by an attempt to make
these States both slave-holding States, in face of the binding law of the
Ordinance of 1787. A popular movement led by Governor Edward Coles of
Illinois defeated this project.

[Sidenote: Liberia]

[Sidenote: Junius Brutus Booth]

On May 5, the territory of Liberia was secured on the west coast of Africa,
and a colony was founded for the repatriation of negro slaves, with
Monrovia for a capital. During this same period Junius Brutus Booth made
his first appearance in America, as Richard III., at Richmond. Late in the
year the remains of Andre, the British officer who was shot as a spy during
the American Revolution, were placed on a British ship for interment in
Westminster Abbey.




1822


[Sidenote: Greek independence declared]

[Sidenote: Sack of Chios]

[Sidenote: Kanaris' exploit]

Greek independence was declared on January 27. After the fall of Ali Pasha
in February, the Sultan was able to turn his undivided attention to the
Greek revolt. In March, a body of Samian revolutionists landed in Chios and
incited the islanders to rise against the Turk. They laid siege to the
citadel held by a Turkish garrison. Had the fleet of the Hydriotes helped
them, they might have prevailed. As it was they rendered themselves a prey
to the Turkish troops on the mainland. An army of nearly 10,000 Turks
landed in Chios, and relieved the besieged garrison. Then the fanatical
Moslems were let loose on the gentle inhabitants of the little island.
Thousands were put to the sword. The slave markets of Northern Africa were
glutted with Chian women and children. Within a month the once lovely
island was a ruined waste. All Greece and Europe was filled with horror.
Maurokordatos, now at the head of Greek affairs, was bitterly blamed for
not sending over a fleet to save Chios. One single Greek took it into his
hands to avenge his countrymen. The Turks were celebrating their sacred
month of Ramazan. On the night of June 18, the festival of Biram, the
Turkish fleet, under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored
lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara,
drove a fire-ship into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to
the admiral's flagship he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes.
Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his ship, he dropped into
his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment
the big Turkish man-of-war was afire. The powder magazine blew up and the
lifeboats went up in flames. The burning rigging fell down upon the doomed
crew, and the admiral was struck down on his poop-deck. The ship was burned
to the water's edge. The Turkish fleet scattered before the shower of
blazing sparks, and was only brought together under the guns of the
Dardanelles. This exploit made Kanaris the hero of Greece. Within the same
year he repeated the feat.

[Sidenote: Morea reinvaded]

[Sidenote: End of Philhellene corps]

[Sidenote: Defence of Argos]

[Sidenote: Turks demoralized]

The Sultan had thrown his whole land force into the Greek mainland.
Khurshid, after his defeat of Ali Pasha, marched to Larissa, in Thessaly.
Thence two armies, 50,000 strong, under Bramali and Homer Brionis converged
upon the Morea. In the face of so formidable an invasion, Maurokordatos
took the field himself. He mismanaged things badly. At Arta he sacrificed
his choicest regiment, the famous corps of Philhellenes, composed of
foreign officers and commanded by men who had won distinction in Napoleon's
campaigns. They were cut down almost to a man. Maurokordatos fell back to
Missolonghi. In the meanwhile Dramalis with 25,000 foot and 6,000 horse
penetrated into the Morea. The Greek Government at Argos dispersed. All
would have been lost for the Greeks had Dramalis not neglected to cover the
mountain passes behind him. While he marched on to Nauplia, the Greek
mountaineers rose behind him. Demetrios Ypsilanti, the acting-president of
Greece, with a few hundred followers threw himself into Argos. There he
held the Acropolis against the Turkish rearguard. Kolokotrones, calling out
the last men from Tripolitza, relieved Ypsilanti at Argos. The mountain
passage was seized. Dramalis had to give up his conquest of the Morea, and
fight his way back to the Isthmus of Corinth. Without supplies and harassed
by hostile peasant forces the Turkish army became badly demoralized.
Thousands were lost on the way. Dramalis himself died from over-exposure.
The remainder of his army melted away at Corinth under the combined effects
of sickness and drought.

[Sidenote: Capodistrias resigns]

A decisive turn in the Greek war for independence was reached. Europe
realized that the revolt had grown to the proportions of a national war.
Popular sympathy in Russia became more clamorous. Capodistrias, the Russian
Prime Minister, rightly measured the force of this long pent-up feeling.
Unable to move the Czar, who still floundered in the toils of the Holy
Alliance, Capodistrias withdrew from public affairs and retired to Geneva.

[Sidenote: Suicide of Castlereagh]

[Sidenote: Canning]

[Sidenote: Iturbide Emperor of Mexico]

[Sidenote: Battle of Pichincha]

[Sidenote: San Martin retires]

[Sidenote: Battle of Junin]

[Sidenote: Ayacucho]

[Sidenote: Independence of Brazil]

In England, the suicide of Castlereagh brought Canning once more into
prominence. Robert Peel was made Home Secretary. Canning's long retirement
after the fiasco of his American policy, and his breach with Castlereagh,
had served to chasten this statesman. As leader of the opposition, he had
learned to reckon with the forces of popular feeling. When he returned to
power in 1822, he was no longer an ultra-conservative, but a liberal. He
now made no disguise of his sympathies with the cause of Greece, and with
the struggle for independence in South and Central America. There the
course of freedom had gathered so much momentum that it was plain to all
that Spain could never prevail without help from others. In Mexico, upon
the refusal of Ferdinand VII. to accept the separate crown of Mexico,
General Iturbide proclaimed himself emperor. On May 19, he assumed the
dignity. As Augustine I., he was crowned in the Cathedral of Mexico in
July. At the same time San Martin and Bolivar met at Guayaquil to dispose
of the destinies of South America. San Martin had just succeeded in
liberating Peru, and had made his triumphal entry into Lima. Bolivar had
brought aid to Ecuador, and established independence there. Jose de Sucre,
whom Bolivar called the "soul of his army," defeated the Spaniards in the
famous battle of Pichincha, fought at a height of 10,200 feet above the
sea. When Bolivar and San Martin met on July 25, San Martin announced his
determination to give a free field to Bolivar. The two men parted at a
great public love-feast at which San Martin toasted Bolivar as the
"liberator of Colombia." In his farewell address he said: "The presence of
a fortunate general in the country which he has conquered is detrimental to
the state. I have won the independence of Peru, and I now cease to be a
public man." Speaking privately of Bolivar, he said: "He is the most
extraordinary character of South America; one to whom difficulties but add
strength." With his daughter Mercedes, San Martin retired to Europe, to
dwell there in obscurity and poverty. Bolivar, with Generals Sucre, Miller
and Cordova, assembled a great liberating army at Juarez. After a
preliminary victory at Junin, Bolivar returned to Lima to assume the reigns
of government, while his generals pushed on against the forces of the
Spanish viceroy. Late in the year a decisive battle was fought at Ayacucho.
The revolutionists charged down the mountain ridges upon the Spaniards in
the plain, and utterly routed them. The viceroy himself was wounded, with
700 of his men, while 1,400 Spaniards were killed outright. In these
casualties the unusual disparity between killed and wounded reveals the
unsparing ferocity of the fight. In Brazil a peaceful revolution was
effected in September. After the return of Juan VI. to Portugal his son Dom
Pedro reigned as regent. On September 7, he yielded to the demands of his
American subjects, and proclaimed the independence of Brazil. He was
declared constitutional emperor of Brazil on October 12, and was crowned as
such shortly afterward at Rio Janeiro.

[Sidenote: Discontent in Spain]

[Sidenote: Foreign aid invoked]

The South American colonies had now in great part secured independence.
Spain was thereby robbed of her best resources. As financial distress
became more widespread, the spirit of discontent rose. The King's plottings
with the extreme Royalists of France lost him the confidence of his
subjects. In the south the triumphant party of the so-called Exaltados
refused obedience to the central administration. The municipal governments
of Cadiz, Cartagena and Seville took the tone of independent republics. In
the north, the Serviles, instigated by French agitators and their money,
broke into open rebellion. After the adjournment of the Cortes, Ferdinand
attempted to make a stroke for himself. The Royal Guards were ordered to
march from Aranjuez to Madrid to place themselves under the King's personal
command. The people took alarm, and several regiments of disaffected
soldiers were induced to head off the guards. A fight ensued in the streets
of Madrid. The guards were scattered. The King found himself a prisoner in
his own palace. He wrote to Louis XVIII. that his crown was in peril. The
Bourbon sympathizers in the north at once seized the town of Seo d'Urgel,
and set up a provisional government. Civil war spread over Spain.
Napoleon's final prophecy that Bourbon rule would end in the ruin of Spain,
and the loss of all the best colonies was near fulfilment. It was then that
the Continental powers of Europe proposed to interfere on behalf of the
Spanish monarchy. The death of old Minister Hardenberg in Berlin did not
loosen Metternich's hold on Prussia. Emperor Alexander hoped to conciliate
his army, burning to fall upon the Turk, by treating them to a light
campaign in Spain. In France, the Spanish war party likewise had the upper
hand.

[Sidenote: Monroe Doctrine]

Nothing could save Spain; but Spanish South and Central America presented
another issue. The new republics had developed a thriving trade with Great
Britain and the United States of America, which made it impossible for
these countries to ignore their flags. In America, Henry Clay on the floor
of Congress, had already urged the recognition of South American
independence. In his annual message to Congress in 1822 President Monroe
took up the question. On behalf of the United States he declared that, the
American continents were henceforth not to be considered a subject for
further colonization by any European power. "In the war between Spain and
her colonies," said President Monroe, "the United States will continue to
observe the strictest neutrality.... With the existing colonies or
dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not
interfere. But with the governments who have declared their independence
and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great considerations
and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition
for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner
their destiny by any European power, in any other light than as the
manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

[Sidenote: Jefferson's indorsement]

[Sidenote: Canning's part]

[Sidenote: Fyffe's comment]

It was the famous Monroe Doctrine, a doctrine that in its substance, if not
in words, had already served as the guiding star of Thomas Jefferson's and
Madison's foreign policy. It is related that President Monroe, applying to
Thomas Jefferson for his opinion on the matter, was surprised at the
positive nature of the reply which he received. "Our first and fundamental
maxim," said Jefferson, "should be never to entangle ourselves in the
broils of Europe; our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with
cis-Atlantic affairs." At the same time that America thus flung down her
gauntlet to Europe, Canning, on behalf of the British Ministry, proposed to
inform the allied Cabinets of England's intention to accredit envoys to the
South American republics. Assured of the support of the United States, and
of Great Britain as well, South America could feel free to work out her own
destiny. This was the master-stroke of Canning's career. When brought to
bay afterward in Parliament, he could proudly boast: "I called the New
World into being, in order to redress the balance of the Old." To Americans
Canning's boast has ever seemed to rest on a flimsy foundation. As Fyffe,
the English historian of modern Europe, has justly said, "The boast, famous
in our Parliamentary history, has left an erroneous impression of the part
really played by Canning at this crisis. He did not call the New World into
existence; he did not even assist it in winning independence, as France had
assisted the United States fifty years before; but when this independence
had been won, he threw over it the aegis of Great Britain, declaring that no
other European power should reimpose the yoke which Spain had not been able
to maintain."

[Sidenote: Death of Shelley]

At the time that Canning made British liberalism respected abroad, literary
England suffered another irreparable loss by the death of Percy Bysshe
Shelley. The last few weeks had been spent by Shelley in Italy in the
company of Trelawney, Williams and Lord Byron. Before this Maurokordatos,
now battling in Greece, had been their constant companion. In June Leigh
Hunt arrived. Shelley and Williams set out in a boat to meet him at
Leghorn. The long parted friends met there. On July 8, Shelley and Williams
set sail for the return voyage to Lerici. Their boat was last seen ten
miles out at sea off Reggio. Then the haze of a summer storm hid it from
view. Ten days later Shelley's body was washed ashore near Reggio. It was
identified by a volume of Sophocles and of Keats's poems found on his
person. In the presence of Byron, Trelawney and Leigh Hunt, Shelley's
remains were cremated on the shore. His ashes were buried in the same
burial ground with Keats, hard by the pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome.

[Sidenote: Lyric quality of his work]

[Sidenote: Shelley's career]

[Sidenote: Shelley's threnody]

Shelley's poetry belongs primarily to the Revolutionary epoch in modern
history. Though he wrote several long narrative poems and one great
tragedy, he was above all a lyric poet--according to some the greatest
lyric poet of England. His life, like his poetry, was almost untrammelled
by convention. Both gave great offence to the stricter elements of English
society. In some respects Shelley was peculiarly unfortunate. At the age of
eighteen, after his expulsion from Oxford University, he married Harriet
Westbrook, a girl of sixteen, and then found himself unable to support
her. Later he abandoned her and eloped with Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin.
Within a year his first wife committed suicide, and, three weeks later,
Shelley married Mary Godwin. The tragedy stirred up much feeling among his
friends. Among others the poet-laureate, Southey, remonstrated with
Shelley. Shelley replied: "I take God to witness, if such a Being is now
regarding both you and me, and I pledge myself, if we meet, as perhaps you
expect, before Him after death, to repeat the same in His presence--that
you accuse me wrongfully. I am innocent of ill, either done or intended."
Next came Shelley's trouble with the Chancery. Lord-Chancellor Elden
refused to give to Shelley the custody of his own children on the ground
that Shelley's professed opinions and conduct were such as the law
pronounced immoral. Shelley replied with his famous poetical curse "To the
Lord Chancellor." While the poem stands as a masterpiece of lyric invective
it did not mend matters for Shelley in England. In many of his other poems
his detractors saw nothing but the glorification of revolution, incest, and
atheism. When he wrote a satirical drama on so delicate a subject as the
unhappy affairs of Queen Caroline, even his publisher turned against him.
Yet the charm and beauty of Shelley's purely lyric pieces was such that he
must ever stand as one of the foremost poets of England. Either his
"Adonais" or the beautiful "Ode to the West Wind," would alone have
perpetuated his name in English letters. One of Shelley's most exquisite
pieces, written shortly before his death, has come to stand as the poet's
own threnody:

  "When the lamp is shattered
    The light in the dust lies dead--
  When the cloud is scattered
    The rainbow's glory is shed.
  When the lute is broken,
    Sweet tones are remembered not;
  When the lips have spoken,
    Loved accents are soon forgot.

  As music and splendor
    Survive not the lamp and the lute,
  The heart's echoes render
    No song when the spirit is mute,
  No song but sad dirges,
    Like the wind through a ruined cell,
  Or the mournful surges
    That ring the dead seaman's knell."

[Sidenote: Revival of letters]

[Sidenote: Golden age of music]

During this same year Thomas de Quincey published his "Confessions of an
Opium Eater," a masterpiece of balanced prose. In other parts of the world,
likewise, it was a golden period for literature. In France, Victor Hugo
published his "Odes et Poesies Diverses," a collection of early poems which
contained some of his most charming pieces. The rising Swedish poet,
Tegner, brought out his "Children of the Last Supper." In Germany, Heinrich
Heine, then still a student at Bonn, issued his earliest verses. For
Germany this was no less a golden age of music. Beethoven, though quite
deaf, was still the greatest of living composers. His great Choral
Symphony, the ninth in D minor, was produced during this year, as was his
Solemn Mass in D major. As a virtuoso he was rivalled by Hummel, who at
this time gave to the world his famous Septet, accepted by himself as his
masterwork. Two other German composers so distinguished themselves that
they were invited to London to conduct the Philharmonic accompaniments.
They were Carl Maria von Weber, who had just brought out his brilliant
opera, "Der Freischuetz," and Ludwig Spohr, who performed in London his new
Symphony in D minor. Of other composers there were Franz Schubert, whose
melodious songs and symphonies won him the recognition of the Esterhazys
and of Beethoven. Among those whose career was but beginning were Jacob
Meyerbeer, a fellow pupil with Weber under Abbe Vogler at Vienna, and Felix
Mendelssohn, the precocious pupil of the famous pianist Moscheles.

[Sidenote: Death of Herschel]

Sir Frederick William Herschel, the greatest modern astronomer, died at
Slough in England. Herschel was born in 1738 at Hanover. He was a musician
of rare skill and a self-taught mathematician of great ability. In 1757, he
deserted the band of Hanoverian Guards in which he played the oboe,
although a mere boy, and fled to England, where he taught music and
achieved success as a violinist and organist. His studies in sound and
harmony led him to take up optics; and from optics to astronomy the step
was short. Dissatisfied with the crude instruments of his time, he made his
own telescopes; for it was his ambition to be not a mere star-gazer, but an
earnest student of the heavens. By day, he and his brother and sister
ground specula; by night he observed the heavens. His astronomical work
includes a careful study of variable stars; an attempt to explain the
relation of sun-spots to terrestrial phenomenae; the determination that the
periods of rotation of various satellites, like the rotation of our own
moon, are equal to the times of their revolutions about their primaries;
and the discovery of the planet Uranus and two of its satellites, and of
the sixth and seventh satellites of Saturn. His greatest work was his study
of binary stars and the demonstration of his belief that the law of
gravitation is universal in its application. His labors were invariably
systematic, and were characterized by dogged, Teutonic perseverance. His
discoveries were never purely accidental, but were made in accordance with
a well-conceived plan.

[Sidenote: Death of Canova]

Late in the autumn news came from Venice that Canova, the celebrated
sculptor, had died. Antonio Canova was born in 1757 at Passaguo near
Treviso. He was first an apprentice to a statuary in Bassano, from whom he
went to the Academy of Venice, where he had a brilliant career. In 1779 he
was sent by the Senate of Venice to Rome, and there produced his Theseus
and the Slain Minotaur. In 1783, Canova undertook the execution of the tomb
of Pope Clement XIV., a work similar to the tomb of Pope Clement XIII. His
fame rapidly increased. He established a school for the benefit of young
Venetians, and among other works produced the well-known Hebe and the
colossal Hercules hurling Lichas into the sea. In 1797, Canova finished the
model of the celebrated tomb of the Archduchess Christina of Austria.
Napoleon called the rising sculptor to France, and he there executed the
famous nude portrait of Napoleon now preserved in Milan. After his return
to Italy he fashioned his Perseus with the Head of Medusa at Rome. When the
Belvidere Apollo was carried off to France, this piece of statuary was
thought not unworthy of the classic Apollo's place and pedestal in the
Vatican. Among the later works of Canova are the colossal group of Theseus
Killing the Minotaur, a Paris, and a Hector. After Napoleon's second fall
in 1815, Canova was commissioned by the Pope to demand the restoration of
the works of art carried from Rome. He went to Paris and succeeded in his
mission. At his return to Rome in 1816, the Pope created him Marquis of
Orchia, with a pension of 3,000 scudi, and his name was entered into the
Golden Book at the Capitol. His closing years were spent in Venice. There
he died October 13, 1822.

[Sidenote: Congress of Verona]

[Sidenote: England slighted]

Upon Canning's accession to the Ministry in England, Wellington was
appointed representative of Great Britain at the Congress of Powers
convened at Vienna. The unsettled state of public opinion kept Wellington
in England and later at Paris. He did not join the Congress until after its
adjournment to Verona, to dispose of purely Italian affairs. Thus it
happened that the supplementary meetings at Verona became the real European
Congress of 1822. With the Neapolitan problem practically settled, and the
Greek war with Turkey at a standstill, the situation in Spain was the most
vital issue. The Czar of Russia and Metternich were determined not to
tolerate the Constitution of the Spanish liberals. Alexander hoped to make
good Russia's non-intervention in Greece by marching a victorious army into
Spain. The extreme Royalists of France, on the other hand, were so bent on
accomplishing this task themselves that they were resolved not to permit
any Russian troops to pass through France. With the spectre of a general
European war thus looming on the horizon, England endeavored to hold the
balance for peace. Acting under the instructions of Canning, Wellington
declared that England would rather set herself against the great alliance
than consent to joint intervention in Spain. In his despatches to Canning,
Wellington expressed his belief that this would result in a decision to
leave the Spaniards to themselves. The only result was that England was
left out of the affair altogether, as she had been in the case of Naples.
It was partly owing to this international slight that Canning put his foot
down so firmly in behalf of Portugal and the South American colonies.

[Sidenote: French attitude toward Spain]

At the Congress of Verona, Metternich once more won the day. With this
backing, the French envoys, Montmorency and Chateaubriand, in defiance of
their home instructions, committed France to war with Spain. An agreement
was reached that, in default of radical changes in the Spanish
Constitution, France and her allies would resort to intervention. On the
part of England, Wellington rejected this proposal, but all the other
powers consented. When the French Ambassadors returned to France, their
Prime Minister, Villele, vented his dissatisfaction by repudiating his
envoys. He addressed himself to the foreign Ambassadors at Paris with a
request that the allies' demands on Spain be postponed. Montmorency at once
resigned. No notice was taken of Villele's request except by England. The
King himself went over to the war party and appointed Chateaubriand his
Minister of Foreign Affairs. Great Britain's tentative offer of mediation
was summarily rejected by France. To Villele, King Louis XVIII. thus
explained his attitude: "Louis XIV. destroyed the Pyrenees; I shall not
allow them to be raised again. He placed my house on the throne of Spain; I
shall not allow it to fall."




1823


[Sidenote: French invasion of Spain]

The Spanish Government was resolved to maintain the national independence
of Spain. It would make no concession. The French Ambassador in Madrid was
recalled. At the opening of the French Chambers in January, the King
himself announced his decision: "I have ordered the recall of my Minister.
One hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, whom I
fondly call my son, are ready to march with a prayer to the God of St.
Louis that they may preserve the throne of Spain to the grandson of Henri
IV. They shall save that fair kingdom from ruin and reconcile it to
Europe." By the middle of March, the Duke of Angouleme and his staff left
Paris. On April 7, the French vanguard crossed the Bidassoa, and the Duke
entered Irun, welcomed by Spanish royalists. About the same time the Cortes
and Constitutional Ministry left Madrid, and compelled King Ferdinand VII.
to accompany them to Seville. The forces of the Spanish Government fell
back without striking a blow. Bands of freebooters calling themselves
royalists went pillaging throughout the northern provinces. The commandant
of Madrid felt constrained to beg the French to hasten their advance lest
the city fall a prey to the freebooters. Already the looting of the suburbs
had begun, when the French entered the Spanish capital on the 24th of May.
A regency was appointed under the Duke of Infantado. The Continental powers
sent accredited representatives to Madrid. Meanwhile the Cortes withdrew to
Cadiz. King Ferdinand refused to accompany them; so they suspended his
powers and appointed a regency over his head. The French prepared to lay
siege to Cadiz.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: Independence of Central America]

[Sidenote: The South American struggle]

Civil war broke out in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, Dom Miguel,
the second son of the absent king, excited a counter revolution. This state
of affairs in the Peninsula gave a finishing stroke to the royal cause in
America. In Central America, the revolutionists of Costa Rica and
Guatemala, who had made common cause with Mexico, proclaimed their
independence. In Mexico, Santa Anna proclaimed the republic at Vera Cruz.
Emperor Iturbide, who felt his throne tottering beneath him, retired, and
was banished from Mexico with an annuity. His sympathizers in Costa Rica
were overthrown in a battle at Ochomoco. On the first day of July, Costa
Rica was united with its neighboring States in the federation of Central
America. Nor had Peru been idle. Two royalist armies under Santa Cruz had
entered the upper provinces. During the summer months they overran the
country between La Paz and Oruro. But in early autumn they were forced back
by the revolutionists under Bolivar, who entered Lima on September 1, and
had himself proclaimed dictator of Peru. In Brazil, during this interval,
the Constitutional Assembly had been convoked in accordance with Dom
Pedro's promise. Under the leadership of the two Andrade brothers the
delegates insisted on the most liberal of constitutions. Dom Pedro's first
attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the Assembly. Finally
he dissolved the contentious assembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to
France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed.
Rebellion broke out in Cisplatina.

[Sidenote: Warring factions in Spain]

[Sidenote: Siege of Cadiz]

In Spain, the two opposing regencies vied with each other in retaliatory
measures. Odious persecutions were instituted on both sides. In vain the
Duke of Angouleme tried to restrain the reprisals of the Spanish royalists.
In August he appeared before Cadiz. He called upon King Ferdinand to
publish an amnesty and restore the medieval Cortes. But the Spanish
Ministry, in the King's name, sent a defiant answer. Cadiz was thereupon
besieged. On August 30, the French stormed the fort of the Trocadero. Three
weeks later the city was bombarded. For the Spanish liberals, the cause had
become hopeless. The French refused all terms but the absolute liberation
of the King. On Ferdinand's assurance that he bore no grudge against his
captors, the liberals agreed to release him. At last, on the 30th of
September, Ferdinand signed a proclamation of absolute and universal
amnesty. Next day he was taken across the bay to the French headquarters.
The Cortes dissolved.

[Sidenote: Release of Ferdinand VII.]

The Duke of Angouleme received King Ferdinand with misgivings. Already he
had written to France: "What most worries the liberals is the question of
guarantees. They know that the King's word is utterly worthless, and that
in spite of his promises he may very well hang every one of them."
Angouleme's first interview confirmed his impression. In reply to his
demand for a general pardon, Ferdinand pointed to the ragged mob shouting
in front of his windows, and said: "You hear the will of the people."
Angouleme wrote to Villele: "This country is about to fall back into
absolutism. I have conscientiously done my part, and shall only express my
settled conviction that every foolish act that can be done will be done."

[Sidenote: Royalist reprisals]

[Sidenote: Riego executed]

Within twelve hours Ferdinand annulled all acts of the Constitutional
Government during the preceding three years. By approving an act of the
regency of Madrid, which declared all those who had taken part in the
removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death
warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips.
Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid
and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the
government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's
confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and
ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and
heretical doctrines associated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified
his acts with a royal pronunciamiento containing this characteristic
passage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the
sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme
Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return
to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I
offer to God holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or
forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were
shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning
pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angouleme was indignant and would have nothing more to do with
the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your
Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some assurance for the
future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has
recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but
arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread
everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the
cause for which he had drawn his sword.

[Sidenote: The French elections]

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed
with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to
be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The
voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the
Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in
Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the
Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the assistance granted
them by France--an assistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people.
The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sought
their support within the nation." For this alleged defence of regicide
Manuel was excluded from the Chambers. On his refusal to give up his
constitutional rights, he was forcibly ejected by the National Guards. "It
is an insult to the National Guard," exclaimed the venerable Lafayette. In
spite of the momentary triumph of the Royalists, Guizot's final verdict on
French intervention in Spain expresses the true attitude of France:

[Sidenote: Guizot's verdict]

"The war was not popular in France; in fact, it was unjust, because
unnecessary. The Spanish revolution, in spite of its excesses, exposed
France and the Restoration to no serious risk; and the intervention was an
attack upon the principle of the legitimate independence of States. It
really produced neither to Spain nor France any good result. It restored
Spain to the incurable and incapable despotism of Ferdinand VII., without
putting a stop to the revolutions; it substituted the ferocities of the
absolutist populace for that of the anarchical populace. Instead of
confirming the influence of France beyond the Pyrenees, it threw the King
of Spain into the arms of the absolutist powers, and delivered up the
Spanish Liberals to the protection of England."

During this year in France occurred the deaths of Dumouriez, the famous
general of the Revolution, and of Marshal Davoust, the hero of Eckmuehl,
Auerstaedt, and a score of other victories won during the Napoleonic
campaigns. At Rome, Pope Pius VII., the one time prisoner of Napoleon, died
in old age, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XII.

[Sidenote: Death of Jenner]

[Sidenote: Vaccination]

Dr. Edward J. Jenner, the great English surgeon and originator of
vaccination, died in the same year at London. Jenner was led to his great
discovery by the remark of an old peasant woman: "I can't catch smallpox,
for I have had cowpox." In 1796, Jenner performed the first vaccination on
a boy patient, James Phipps, whom he subsequently endowed with a house and
grounds. The scientific results of this experiment and those that followed
were embodied by Jenner in his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the
variolae vaccinae," published on the eve of the Nineteenth Century. Unlike so
many other medical innovations, Jenner's epoch-making cure for the dread
disease of smallpox won him almost instant general renown. Parliament, in
1802, voted him a national reward of L10,000, and a few years later added
another gift of L20,000. After his death a public monument was erected to
Jenner's memory on Trafalgar Square.

[Sidenote: Amherst Governor in India]

In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governorship at Calcutta and was
succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch
influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were
firmly settled in Singapore.

[Sidenote: American letters]

In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the
first boat passed through the new Erie Canal from Rochester to New York. In
Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of
streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The
earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first
book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quantities
was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of
Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his
famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under
Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies.
On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was
once more elected Speaker of the House.




1824


[Sidenote: American high tariff]

[Sidenote: Southern ascendency waning]

In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American
Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22,
Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, passed
Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent.
Before the passage of the bill England had been importing goods more
cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could
now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free
trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was
prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by
taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment,
advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States,
with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New
England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824
the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the
two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between
protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features.
Political leadership in the United States was passing from the South to the
North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pushing to the front.
Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing
rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in
the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio;
manufacturing industries multiplied. From a sparsely inhabited country in
1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.

[Sidenote: American letters]

American letters were enriched in this year by Irving's "Tales of a
Traveller," Paulding's "John Bull," Bancroft's "Politics in Ancient
Greece," and Verplanck's "Revealed Religion."

[Sidenote: South American republics recognized]

During the first session of Congress a special message from President
Monroe recommended the establishment of intercourse with the new
independent States of South America--Venezuela, New Granada, Buenos Ayres,
Chile and Peru. Congress voted for recognition by an overwhelming majority,
and the President signed the bill. The United States was the first among
the civilized powers to welcome the new republics.

The struggle for independence in South America was furthered more than ever
by the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the Peninsula. In Spain the
return of absolute rule was still followed by a reign of terror. The people
there relapsed into medieval barbarism.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Constitution triumphant]

[Sidenote: Growth of republican sentiment]

[Sidenote: Iturbide shot]

[Sidenote: Santa Anna in power]

In Portugal, the revolution stirred up by Dom Miguel ended with the
expulsion of that prince from Lisbon. His father, Dom Pedro, in Brazil,
thought it wise to recognize the liberal constitution imposed upon him by
his people. In the other Latin-American countries the people rebelled
against one-man rule. In Chile, General O'Higgins was forced to resign his
dictatorship and a provisional Triumvirate assumed the government. At Lima,
Bolivar found his powers curtailed. Mariano Prado was elected president.
The feeling against imperialism was so strong in Central America that all
the smaller States joined in confederation to ward off this danger
threatening them from Mexico. The Junta of San Salvador went so far as to
pass a resolution favoring annexation by the United States of North America
in case the Mexican imperialists crossed its borders. Eventually San
Salvador, together with Nicaragua and Costa Rica, joined the Central
American Union. The first Congress in Costa Rica elected Juan Mora
president. In Mexico, in the meantime, a strong provisional government was
established by Santa Anna. Ex-Emperor Iturbide, who in defiance of his
exile returned to Mexico, was arrested as he landed at Sota la Marina in
July. He was taken to the capital, tried, condemned, and shot. As he faced
death he said: "Mexicans, I die because I came to help you. I die gladly,
because I die among you. I die not as a traitor, but with honor." With
Iturbide out of the way, Santa Anna established a government strong enough
to accomplish the annexation of California. Henceforth there was no danger
of a return to Spanish rule. In England, Canning followed Monroe with an
absolute recognition of the independent governments in America.

[Sidenote: Death of Byron]

[Sidenote: Rhegas' hymn]

By this time public opinion in England had been aroused in behalf of the
Greeks still struggling for their independence from the yoke of Turkey. A
powerful impetus was given to this feeling by the tragic death of Lord
Byron in Greece. A few months before the poet had sailed from Genoa for
Greece to take active part in the war for freedom. He died of fever at
Missolonghi on April 19, at the age of thirty-six. One of his last poems
was a spirited translation of Rhegas' famous Greek national hymn:

  Sons of the Greeks, arise!
    The glorious hour shines forth,
  And, worthy of such ties,
    Display who gave us worth!

  Sons of Greeks! let us go
    In arms against the foe,
  Till their hated blood shall flow
    In a river past our feet.

  Then manfully despise
    The Turkish tyrant's yoke,
  Let your country see you rise,
    Till all her chains are broke.

  Brave shades of chiefs and sages,
    Behold the coming strife!
  Greeks of past ages,
    Oh, start again to life!

  At the sound of my trumpet,
    Break your sleep, join with me!
  And the seven-hill'd city seek,
    Fight, and win, till we are free!

[Sidenote: Goethe on Byron]

[Sidenote: Mazzini's verdict]

[Sidenote: Shelley's estimate]

[Sidenote: Symonds' judgment]

[Sidenote: Byron's best works]

Byron's death served the Greek cause better perhaps than all he could have
achieved had his life been prolonged. It caused a greater stir throughout
Continental Europe than it did in England. In truth Byron's poetry was
more appreciated by the world at large than by his countrymen--a literary
anomaly that has prevailed even to the end of the Nineteenth Century.
Goethe said of Byron after his death: "The English may think of Byron as
they please; but this is certain, that they can show no poet who is to be
compared with him. He is different from all the others, and for the most
part greater." Mazzini, many years later, concluded his famous essay on
Byron and Goethe with this vindication of the English poet's claim: "The
day will come when Democracy will remember all that it owes to Byron.
England too, will, I hope, one day remember the mission--so entirely
English, yet hitherto overlooked by her--which Byron fulfilled on the
Continent; the European cast given by him to English literature, and the
appreciation and sympathy for England which he awakened among us." Shelley,
who knew Byron intimately, has given perhaps the best expression to the
English view of him. He said of him in 1822: "The coarse music which he
produced touched a chord to which a million hearts responded.... Space
wondered less at the swift and fair creations of God when he grew weary of
vacancy, than I at this spirit of an angel in the mortal paradise of a
decaying body." To most Englishmen of his day, Byron, like Shelley,
appeared as a monster of impious wickedness. Unlike Shelley, he attained
thereby the vogue of the forbidden. His earliest poems achieved what the
French call a _succes de scandal_. His satire, "English Bards and Scotch
Reviewers," brought to the youthful poet a notoriety amounting to fame.
After the publication of the first two cantos of "Childe Harold," in 1812,
according to his own phrase, he awoke to find himself famous, and became a
spoiled child of society. Trelawney has recorded that Byron was what London
in the days of the Prince Regent made him. One of Byron's ablest critics,
Symonds, has put this even more strongly: "His judgment of the world was
prematurely warped, while his naturally earnest feelings were overlaid with
affectations and prejudices which he never succeeded in shaking off.... It
was his misfortune to be well born, but ill bred, combining the pride of a
peer with the self-consciousness of a parvenu." Byron's life in London
between 1812 and 1816 certainly increased his tendency to cynicism, as did
his divorce from his wife. While these experiences distorted his personal
character, they supplied him, however, with much of the irony wrought into
his masterpiece, "Don Juan." His poetic genius derived its strongest
stimulus from his imbittered domestic life and from his travels in Spain,
Italy and Greece. This twofold character of the poet it is that is revealed
in his best poems, "Childe Harold" and "Don Juan." He used both works as
receptacles for the most incongruous ideas. "If things are farcical," he
once said to Trelawney, "they will do for 'Don Juan'; if heroical, you
shall have another canto of 'Childe Harold.'" This means of disposing of
his poetic ideas accounts for the great volume of Byron's verse as well as
for its inequality. That "Don Juan" was never finished cannot therefore be
regretted.

[Sidenote: His last verses]

Byron's last verses were lines written on January 22, 1824, at Missolonghi.
To one of his English military associates in the expedition of Lepanto he
remarked: "You were complaining that I never write any poetry now. This is
my birthday, and I have just finished something which, I think, is better
than what I usually write." They were the famous lines, "On this Day I
complete my Thirty-sixth Year":

  'Tis time the heart should be unmoved,
    Since others it hath ceased to move;
  Yet, though I cannot be beloved,
      Still let me love!

  My days are in the yellow leaf;
    The flowers and fruits of love are gone;
  The worm, the canker, and the grief
      Are mine alone!

         *       *       *       *       *

  Awake! (not Greece--she is awake!)
    Awake my spirit! Think through whom
  Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake,
      And then strike home!

  If thou regret'st thy youth, why live?
    The land of honorable death
  Is here--Up, to the field, and give
      Away thy breath!

  Seek out--less often sought than found--
    A soldier's grave, for thee the best!
  Then look around, and choose thy ground,
      And take thy rest!

[Sidenote: Russian suzerainty rejected by Greeks]

[Sidenote: Ibrahim invades Greece]

[Sidenote: Sack of Psara]

When Byron died, Missolonghi had been delivered from its first siege.
Greece was plunged in civil war. Kolokotrones, who set himself up against
the government of Konduriottes and Kolletes, was overthrown and lodged in
a prison on the island of Hydra. An offer of Russian intervention at the
price of Russian suzerainty was rejected by the Greeks. Encouraged by this,
the Sultan appealed to his vassal, Mehemet Ali of Egypt, to help him
exterminate the Greeks. The island of Crete was held out to Mehemet Ali as
a prize. The ambitious ruler of Egypt responded with enthusiasm. He raised
an army of 90,000 men and a fleet, and sent them forth under the command of
his adopted son Ibrahim. Early in the spring the Egyptian expedition landed
in Crete and all but exterminated its Greek population. The island of
Kossos was next captured; and its inhabitants were butchered. In July, the
Turkish fleet took advantage of the Greek Government's weakness to make a
descent upon Psara, one of the choicest islands of Greece. In spite of
desperate resistance, the citadel of Psara was stormed, and the Psariotes
were put to the sword. Thousands were slain, while the women and children
were carried off as slaves. How little the miseries of the Greeks affected
the rulers of Europe may be gathered from this bright side light on
Metternich given by his secretary Gentz:

[Sidenote: Metternich's comment]

[Sidenote: Defeat of Turkish fleet]

"Prince Metternich was taking an excursion, in which unfortunately I could
not accompany him. I at once sent a letter after him from Ischl with the
important news of the Psariote defeat.... The prince soon came back to me;
and (pianissimo, in order that friends of Greece might not hear it) we
congratulated one another on the event, which may very well prove the
beginning of the end for the Greek insurrection." The Greeks, instead of
desponding, were aroused to fiercer resistance than ever. A Hydriote fleet
foiled Ibrahim Pasha's attempt on Samos. When he tried to return to Crete
his fleet was beaten back with a signal reverse. Finally, late in the year,
the Egyptians succeeded in eluding the vigilance of the Hydriote
sea-captains, and regained their base of supplies in Crete.

[Sidenote: Burmese war]

[Sidenote: Siege of Rangoon]

[Sidenote: British checked at Donabew]

While Canning's Ministry was still preparing the ground for European
intervention in Greece, the British Government in India found itself with
another native war on its hands. In 1822, the Burmese leader Bundula had
invaded the countries between Burma and Bengal. The Burmese conquered the
independent principalities of Assam and Munipore, and threatened Cachar.
Next Bundula invaded British territory and cut off a detachment of British
sepoys. It was evident that the Burmese were bent on the conquest of
Bengal. Lord Amherst, who had assumed charge early in 1824, sent an
expedition against them under Sir Archibald Campbell. The resistance of the
Burmese was despicable. The British soldiers nowhere found foes worthy of
their steel. In May, the British expedition, having marched straight to
Burma, occupied the capital Rangoon, which was found deserted and denuded
of all supplies. Ill fed and far from succor, the British had to spend a
rainy season there. Taking advantage of their precarious position, Bundula
returned late in the year with an army of 60,000 men. The Englishmen were
besieged. In December they made a successful sortie and stormed the
Burmese stockades. Bundula with the remains of his army was driven up the
banks of the river Irawaddy. They made a stand at Donabew, some forty miles
from Rangoon, where they held the British in check.

[Sidenote: German letters]

The rest of the world throughout this year lay in profound peace. In
Germany the rulers of the various principalities were allowed to continue
their reigns undisturbed. Only in Brunswick the assumption of the
government by Charles Frederick William met with the disapproval of the
German Diet. Although pronounced incapable of reigning, he succeeded none
the less in clinging to his throne. A more important event for the
enlightened element in Germany was the appearance of the first of Leopold
von Ranke's great histories of the Romance and Teutonic peoples. In the
realm of poetry a stir was created by the publication of Rueckert's and
Boerne's lyrics, and Heinrich Heine's "Alamansor" and "Ratcliffe."

[Sidenote: French literature]

[Sidenote: Clericals in the ascendant]

[Sidenote: Chateaubriand dismissed]

[Sidenote: Death of Louis XVIII.]

In France, Lamartine brought out his "Death of Socrates," and Louis Thiers
published the first instalments of his great "History of the French
Revolution." Simultaneously there appeared Francois Mignet's "History of
the French Revolution." While these historians were expounding the lessons
of this great regeneration of France, the Royalists in the Chambers did
their best to undo its work. After the ejection of Manuel from the
Chambers, and the Ministers' consequent appeal to the country, the
elections were so manipulated by the government that only nineteen Liberal
members were returned to the Chambers. Immediate advantage was taken of
this to favor the Clericals and returned Emigrees, and to change the laws
so as to elect a new House every seven years, instead of one-fifth part of
the Chamber each year. Monseigneur Frayssinous, the leader of the
Clericals, was made Minister of Public Instruction. The friction between
Prime Minister Villele and Chateaubriand was ended by Villele's summary
dismissal of Chateaubriand as Foreign Minister. Chateaubriand at once
became the most formidable opponent of the Ministry in the "Journal des
Debats," and in the Chamber of Peers. At this stage of public affairs Louis
XVIII. died, on September 16, with the ancient pomp of royalty. Before he
expired he said, pointing to his bed: "My brother will not die in that
bed." The old King's prophecy was based on the character of the French
people as much as on that of his brother. Indeed, Louis XVIII. was the only
French ruler during the Nineteenth Century who died as a sovereign in his
bed. He was duly succeeded by his brother, Count of Artois, who took the
title "Charles X." and retained Villele as Minister of France.




1825


[Sidenote: Charles X.]

Charles X. was crowned King of France in the Cathedral of Rheims. His first
public measure was the appropriation of a million francs to indemnify the
French Royalists, whose lands had been confiscated during the French
Revolution. Next came the proposal of a law on sacrilege, and one for
primogeniture. Both bills were strenuously opposed by the Liberals. Broglie
exclaimed: "What you are now preparing is a social and political
revolution, a revolution against the revolution which changed France nearly
forty years ago." Old Lafayette was glad to leave the country to visit
North America.

[Sidenote: American election contest]

[Sidenote: John Quincy Adams President]

[Sidenote: Henry Clay rewarded]

[Sidenote: Changes in American politics]

[Sidenote: Adams's first message]

In the United States the election of 1824 had to be decided by the House of
Representatives. For the Presidency the candidates were Andrew Jackson,
John Quincy Adams, Crawford and Clay, and for the Vice-Presidency Calhoun,
Sanford, Macon, Jackson, Van Buren and Clay. They all belonged to the
Democratic-Republican party. Jackson had received the highest number of
electoral votes--99 were for him and 84 for Adams. Calhoun, as candidate
for Vice-President, led with 182 votes. In the House of Representatives
Clay, as leader, opposed Jackson. Adams was declared President, with
Calhoun for Vice-President. The electoral vote of thirteen States was given
to Adams, while Jackson received seven. John Quincy Adams was then
fifty-eight years of age. Washington had made him Minister to The Hague,
and then to Lisbon, and in 1797 his father, then President, sent him as
Minister to Berlin. In 1803, he was United States Senator. Six years later
he was Minister to Russia. During both of Monroe's terms he was Secretary
of State. Upon his inauguration as President, Adams made Clay Secretary of
State. Wirt, McLean and Southard were retained in the Cabinet. The
adherents of Jackson declared that a bargain had been made between Clay and
Adams, who then paid Clay they alleged for his support in the "scrub race"
for the Presidency. Randolph characterized the supposed arrangement as a
"bargain between the Puritan and the Black Leg," and in consequence was
challenged by Clay to fight a duel. Neither was injured. The election was
followed by an immediate reorganization of political parties, on the
question of supporting Adams's administration. Whether the successor of
Adams should be a Northerner or a Southerner was the question at issue. His
opponents were slave-holders and their Northern friends; his supporters,
the antagonists of the Democratic party, whether known as National
Republican, Whig or Republican party, all of which terms were in use. For
the first time the new Congress, under the reapportionment, represented the
entire population of the country, with New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio in
the lead. In the Senate were men of brilliant promise. Clay was still a
leader, and so was Webster, in the rising majesty of his renown. The
contest between the parties was narrowed down to two great issues--internal
improvements under national auspices and tariff for the protection of
manufactures. President Adams in his first message gave opportunity for
concerted opposition. He took advanced ground in favor of national
expenditure on internal improvements, and urged the multiplication of
canals, the endowment of a national university, expenditures for scientific
research, and the erection of a national observatory. He announced that an
invitation had been accepted from the South American states to a conference
at Panama, in regard to the formation of a political and commercial league
between the two Americas. The Senate requested President Adams to give it
information "touching the principles and practice of the Spanish-American
states, or any of them--in regard to negro slavery." The subject was
debated for almost the entire session. When enough had been said to show
that slavery must not be interfered with, the delegates were nominated and
an appropriation was made. The delegates never went.

[Sidenote: Erie Canal completed]

[Sidenote: Beneficial results]

On November 4, the first boat travelling along the new Erie Canal reached
New York. Through the efforts of De Witt Clinton, the State of New York
without Congressional aid had completed the great Erie Canal. Its annual
tolls were found to amount to half its cost. The financial and commercial
results of the great work were immediate and manifest. The cost of
carrying freight between Albany and New York was reduced from the 1820 rate
of $88 per ton, to $22.50, and soon to $6.50. Travel was no less
facilitated, so that it was possible for emigrants to reach Michigan,
Illinois and Wisconsin cheaply. These fertile States grew accordingly in
population. In 1825 the Capitol at Washington was nearly completed; the
outer walls proved to be uninjured by the fire of 1814. The foundation of
the central building had been laid in 1818, and this edifice was now
completed on its original plan.

[Sidenote: Lafayette visits America]

The American visit of the old Marquis de la Fayette--to give him his French
name--was celebrated with national rejoicings. Years ago, when he left the
American republic after its independence was achieved, it was a poor, weak
and struggling nation. Its prosperity and increasing power now amazed him.
The thirteen colonies along the coast had increased to twenty-four
independent, growing and progressive commonwealths, reaching a thousand
miles westward from the sea. Lafayette was the nation's guest for a year.
On June 17, 1825, just fifty years after the battle of Bunker Hill, he laid
the cornerstone of the obelisk which commemorates that battle in Boston. On
this same occasion Daniel Webster made one of his great speeches. Lafayette
returned to France in the American frigate "Brandywine," named in honor of
the first battle in which Lafayette fought and was wounded half a century
before. Congress presented him with a gift of $200,000 in money, and with a
township of land in recognition of the disinterested services of his
youth.

[Sidenote: Argentine Republic]

Shortly before President Adams accepted the invitation to send North
American representatives to the proposed Congress of Panama, thirteen
independent States joined at Buenos Ayres in a powerful confederation and
formed the Republic of Argentine. A national constitution was adopted and
Rivadiera elected President. The new republic was soon called upon to prove
its mettle in the war levied against it by Brazil for the possession of
Uruguay. In the end Uruguay remained a part of Argentina. Brazil had
previously achieved its complete independence from the mother country by
assuming the public debt of Portugal, amounting to some ten million
dollars. England gave its official recognition to these new changes of
government as it had to the others.

[Sidenote: Burmese reverses]

[Sidenote: New British acquisitions]

The British war against the Burmese was nearly over. Early in the year the
British forces left at Rangoon advanced up the river Irawaddy toward
Donabew. The first attempt to take this stronghold was repulsed, whereupon
the British settled down to a regular siege. While trying to get the range
with their mortars the gunners succeeded in killing Bundula, the chieftain
of the Burmese. His brother flinched from the command of the army and was
promptly beheaded. The Burmese forces went to pieces. The British proceeded
to Prome, and inflicted another crushing defeat on the remaining
detachments of the Burmese army. At the approach of the British column the
Burmese rulers at Ava became frantic. All the demented women that could be
found in and about Ava were gathered together and conducted to the front
that they might bewitch the English. When this measure proved ineffectual,
Prince Tharawadi tried to stem the British approach, but could not get his
followers to face the enemy. All the country from Rangoon to Ava was under
British control. The Burmese came to terms. As a result of the conflict the
territories of Assam, Arrakan and Tenaserim were ceded to the British.

[Sidenote: Crisis in Bhurtpore]

[Sidenote: Summary British dealings]

While the British were still in the midst of this campaign a crisis
occurred in Bhurtpore. The sudden death of the Rajah there left no
successor to the throne but an infant son of seven. He was proclaimed Rajah
under the guardianship of his uncle. A cousin of the dead king won over the
army of Bhurtpore, and putting the uncle to death imprisoned the little
Rajah. Sir David Ochterlony, the aged British Resident at Delhi, interfered
in behalf of the little prince and advanced British troops into Bhurtpore.
His measures were repudiated by Lord Amherst. Sir David took the rebuff so
much to heart that he resigned his appointment. Within two months after his
retirement the old soldier died in bitterness of soul. The sequel
vindicated his judgment. In defiance of the British Government, the usurper
of Bhurtpore rallied around him all the dissatisfied spirits of the
Mahrattas, Pindarees, Jats and Rajputs. Lord Amherst was forced to retreat
to Vera. The British army under Lord Combermere crossed the border and
pushed through to Bhurtpore. The heavy mud walls of the capital had to be
breached with mines. The usurper was deposed and put out of harm's way in a
British prison. With the restoration of the infant Prince in Bhurtpore, all
danger of another great Indian rising seemed at end.

  [Illustration: SOLFERINO
    Painted by E. Meissonier
    From Carbon Print by Braun, Clement & Co., N.Y.]

[Sidenote: The first railway]

At home in England it was a period of unprecedented scientific and
industrial development. Following Faraday's recent conversion of the
electric current into mechanical motion, Sturgeon invented the prototype of
the electro-magnet. The first public railway for steam locomotives was
opened between Stockton and Darlington by Edward Peese and George
Stephenson--an innovation which caused great excitement throughout England.
On the opening day, September 27, an immense concourse of people assembled
along the line to see the train go by. Nearly every one prophesied that the
"iron horse" would be a failure. The train weighed about ninety English
tons, and consisted of six wagons loaded with coal and flour, then a
covered coach containing directors and proprietors, with twenty-one coal
wagons fitted up for invited passengers, nearly 600 in number. Stephenson's
engine, named the "Locomotion," had a ten-foot boiler and weighed not quite
1,500 pounds. As six miles an hour was supposed to be the limit of speed,
it was arranged that a man on horseback should ride on the track ahead of
the engine carrying a flag. The train was started without difficulty amid
cheers. Many tried to keep up with it by running, and some gentlemen on
horseback galloped across the fields to accompany the train. After a few
minutes, Stephenson shouted to the horseman with the flag to get out of the
way, for he was going to "let her go." Ordering the fireman to "keep her
hot, lad," he opened wide the throttle-valve and the speed was quickly
raised to twelve miles an hour and then to fifteen.

[Sidenote: Stephenson's practical demonstration]

The runners on foot, the gentlemen on horseback and the horseman with the
flag were left far behind. So, with the cross-beams and side-rods trembling
from the violent motion, the red-hot chimney ejecting clouds of black
smoke, amid the cheers of the delighted spectators and to the astonishment
of the passengers--the immortal George Stephenson brought his train safely
into Darlington.

As the "Newcastle Courant" (October 1, 1825) put it, "certainly the
performance excited the astonishment of all present, and exceeded the most
sanguine expectations of every one conversant with the subject. The engine
arrived at Stockton in three hours and seven minutes after leaving
Darlington, including stops, the distance being nearly twelve miles, which
is at the rate of four miles an hour; and upon the level part of the
railway, the number of passengers was counted about four hundred and fifty,
and several more clung to the carriages on each side. At one time the
passengers by the engine had the pleasure of accompanying and cheering
their brother passengers by the stage coach, which passed alongside, and of
observing the striking contrast exhibited by the power of the engine and of
horses; the engine with her six hundred passengers and load, and the coach
with four horses and only sixteen passengers."

[Sidenote: Immediate railroad development]

So successful was the Stockton and Darlington railway that a bill was
brought in Parliament for the construction of a railroad between Liverpool
and Manchester after Stephenson's plan. The scheme was violently opposed.
Its detractors, among whom were Lords Lefton and Derby, declared that
Stephenson's locomotive would poison the air, kill the birds as they flew
over them, destroy the preservation of pheasants, burn up the farms and
homesteads near the lines; that oats and hay would become unsalable because
horses would become extinct; travelling on the highways would become
impossible; country inns would be ruined; boilers would burst and kill
hundreds of passengers. Indeed, there was no peril imaginable that was not
predicted to attend the working of a railroad by steam.

When Stephenson was examined by a Parliamentary committee, one of the
members put this question: "Suppose, now, one of these engines to be going
along a railroad at a rate of nine or ten miles an hour, and that a cow
were to stray upon the line, and get in the way of the engine, would not
that, think you, be a very awkward circumstance?" "Yaw," replied
Stephenson, in his broad Northumbrian dialect, "ay, awkward--for the
_coo_." On account of his speech Stephenson was denounced as a "foreigner,"
and the bill was thrown out by the committee, by a vote of 37 against 36.
After a second Parliamentary battle, the bill was passed through both
Houses by a majority of forty-seven votes. The passage of the act cost
L27,000.

[Sidenote: Other modern inventions]

[Sidenote: English financial crisis averted]

[Sidenote: Canning's attempted reforms]

Almost coincidentally, Faraday found that benzine was a constituent of
petroleum, a discovery destined to affect the modern construction of
automobile vehicles toward the close of the century. A number of other
achievements made this an important year for science in England. John
Crowther took out a patent for his invention of a hydraulic crane. The
steam jet was first applied to construction work by Timothy Hackworth.
Joseph Clement built a planing machine for iron. One of the earliest chain
suspension bridges was erected at Menai Strait by Thomas Thelford, and at
the same time Brunel sunk his first shaft for the Thames tunnel.
Significant of the industrial revival of those days was the opening of
mechanics' institutes at Exeter and Belfast. In Canada, the newly founded
McGill College was raised to the rank of a university. A financial measure
of far-reaching import was the Bank of England's sudden diminution of its
circulation to the extent of L3,500,000 by the combined exertions of the
bank and of the royal mint. A crisis in public funds was thus averted. The
most important political measure of the year was Canning's attempt to
repeal the political disabilities of the Catholics in England. A bill to
this effect was passed through the Commons, but was thrown out by the House
of Lords. Canning's friend Huskisson inaugurated a commercial policy, which
was founded on the theory of free trade, destined to bring about the repeal
of the corn laws.

[Sidenote: Greek reverses]

[Sidenote: Nauplia and Missolonghi besieged]

[Sidenote: Greece devastated]

The situation in Greece was calculated to stiffen the backbone of Canning's
foreign policy. On February 22, Ibrahim's Egyptian army had crossed the sea
unopposed and overran the Morea. The Greeks were defeated near Nodoni, and
the garrison of Sphakteria was overwhelmed. The forts of Navarino
capitulated. In vain was old Kolokotrones released from his prison to
oppose the onslaught of Ibrahim's Arabs. The Greeks were driven back
through Tripolitza, and did not succeed in making a stand until the Turks
reached Nauplia. Here Demetrios Ypsilanti with a few hundred men repulsed
the Turkish vanguard at Lerna. Ibrahim settled down to the siege of Nauplia
and of Missolonghi. The country round about was laid waste and the people
killed. Ibrahim's hordes even cut down all trees and saplings. Thus the
fertile mountains and hillsides of Greece were changed into the barren
rocks they are to-day. Nothing so excited the sympathy of the lovers of
liberty in Europe as these wanton ravages on classic soil committed by the
savages of the desert. Even Alexander of Russia was so moved by the ri

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