READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM

A HISTORY OF MODERN EUROPE FROM 1792 TO 1878

CHAPTER XVII.

SPANISH AND EASTERN AFFAIRS.

ALLIANCES of opinion usually cover the pursuit on one or both sides of some definite interest; and to this rule the alliance which appeared to be springing up between France and England after the changes of 1830 was no exception. In the popular view, the bond of union between the two States was a common attachment to principles of liberty; and on the part of the Whig states-men who now governed England this sympathy with free constitutional systems abroad was certainly a powerful force: but other motives than mere community of sentiment combined to draw the two Governments together, and in the case of France these immediate interests greatly outweighed any abstract preference for a constitutional ally.

Louis Philippe had an avowed and obstinate enemy in the Czar of Russia, who had been his predecessor's friend: the Court of Vienna tolerated usurpers only where worse mischief would follow from attacking them; Prussia had no motive for abandoning the connections which it had maintained since 1815. As the union between the three Eastern Courts grew closer in consequence of the outbreak of revolution beyond the borders of France, a good understanding with Great Britain became more and more obviously the right policy for Louis Philippe; on the other hand, the friendship of France seemed likely to secure England from falling back into that isolated position which it had occupied when the Holy Alliance laid down the law to Europe, and averted the danger to which the Ottoman Empire, as well as the peace of the world, had been exposed by the combination of French with Russian schemes of aggrandizement. If Canning, left without an ally in Europe, had called the new world into existence to redress the balance of the old, his Whig successors might well look with some satisfaction on that shifting of the weights which had brought over one of the Great Powers to the side of England, and anticipate, in the concert of the two great Western States, the establishment of a permanent force in European politics which should hold in check the reactionary influences of Vienna and St. Petersburg. To some extent these views were realized. A general relation of friendliness was recognized as subsisting between the Governments of Paris and London, and in certain European complications their intervention was arranged in common. But even here the element of mistrust was seldom absent; and while English Ministers jealously watched each action of their neighbour, the French Government rarely allowed the ties of an informal alliance to interfere with the prosecution of its own views. Although down to the close of Louis Philippe's reign the good understanding between England and France was still nominally in existence, all real confidence had then long vanished; and on more than one occasion the preservation of peace between the two nations had been seriously endangered.

It was in the establishment of the kingdom of Belgium that the combined action of France and England produced its first and most successful result. A second demand was made upon the Governments of the two constitutional Powers by the conflicts which agitated the Spanish Peninsula, and which were stimulated in the general interests of absolutism by both the Austrian and the Russian Court. The intervention of Canning in 1826 on behalf of the constitutional Regency of Portugal against the foreign supporters of Don Miguel, the head of the clerical and reactionary party, had not permanently restored peace to that country. Miguel indeed accepted the constitution, and, after betrothing himself to the infant sovereign, Donna Maria, who was still with her father, Pedro, in Brazil, entered upon the Regency which his elder brother had promised to him. But his actions soon disproved the professions of loyalty to the constitution which he had made; and after dissolving the Cortes, and re-assembling the medieval Estates, he caused himself to be proclaimed King (June, 1828). A reign of terror followed. The constitutionalists were completely crushed. Miguel's own brutal violence gave an example to all the fanatics and ruffians who surrounded him; and after an unsuccessful appeal to arms, those of the adherents of Donna Maria and the constitution who escaped from imprisonment or execution took refuge in England or in the Azore islands, where Miguel had not been able to establish his authority.

Though Miguel was not officially recognized as Sovereign by most of the foreign Courts, his victory was everywhere seen with satisfaction by the partisans of absolutism; and in Great Britain, where the Duke of Wellington was now in power, the precedent of Canning's intervention was condemned, and a strict neutrality maintained. Not only was all assistance refused to Donna Maria, but her adherents who had taken refuge in England were prevented from making this country the basis of any operations against the usurper.

Such was the situation of Portuguese affairs when the events of 1830 brought an entirely new spirit into the foreign policy of both England and France. Miguel, however, had no inclination to adapt his own policy to the change of circumstances; on the contrary, he challenged the hostility of both governments by persisting in a series or wanton attacks upon English and French subjects resident at Lisbon. Satisfaction was demanded, and exacted by force. English and French squadrons successively appeared in the Tagus. Lord Palmerston, now Foreign Secretary in the Ministry of Earl Grey, was content with obtaining a pecuniary indemnity for his countrymen, accompanied by a public apology from the Portuguese Government: the French admiral, finding some difficulty in obtaining redress, carried off the best ships of Don Miguel's navy. A weightier blow was, however, soon to fall upon the usurper.

His brother, the Emperor Pedro, threatened with revolution in Brazil, resolved to return to Europe and to enforce the rights of his daughter to the throne of Portugal. Pedro arrived in London in July, 1831, and was permitted by the Government to raise troops and to secure the services of some of the best naval officers of this country. The gathering place of his forces was Terceira, one of the Azore islands, and in the summer of 1832 a sufficiently strong body of troops was collected to undertake the reconquest of Portugal. A landing was made at Oporto, and this city fell into the hands of Don Pedro without resistance. Miguel, however, now marched against his brother, and laid siege to Oporto. For nearly a year no progress was made by either side; at length the arrival of volunteers from various countries, among whom was Captain Charles Napier, enabled Pedro to divide his forces and to make a new attack on Portugal from the south. Napier, in command of the fleet, annihilated the navy of Don Miguel off St. Vincent; his colleague, Villa Flor, landed and marched on Lisbon. The resistance of the enemy was overcome, and on the 28th of July, 1833, Don Pedro entered the capital. But the war was not yet at an end, for Miguel's cause was as closely identified with the interests of European absolutism as that of his brother was with constitutional right, and assistance both in troops and money continued to arrive at his camp. The struggle threatened to prove a long and obstinate one, when a new turn was given to events in the Peninsula by the death of Ferdinand, King of Spain.

Since the restoration of absolute Government in Spain in 1823, Ferdinand, in spite of his own abject weakness and ignorance, had not given complete satisfaction to the fanatics of the clerical party. Some vestiges of statesman-ship, some sense of political necessity, as well as the influence of foreign counsellors, had prevented the Government of Madrid from completely identifying itself with the monks and zealots who had first risen against the constitution of 1820, and who now sought to establish the absolute supremacy of the Church. The Inquisition had not been restored, and this alone was enough to stamp the King as a renegade in the eyes of the ferocious and implacable champions of medieval bigotry. Under the name of Apostolicals, these reactionaries had at times broken into open rebellion. Their impatience had, however, on the whole been restrained by the knowledge that in the King's brother and heir, Don Carlos, they had an adherent whose devotion to the priestly cause was beyond suspicion, and who might be expected soon to ascend the throne. Ferdinand had been thrice married; he was childless; his state of health miserable; and his life likely to be a short one.

The succession to the throne of Spain had moreover, since 1713, been governed by the Salic Law, so that even in the event of Ferdinand leaving female issue Don Carlos would nevertheless inherit the crown. These confident hopes were rudely disturbed by a fourth marriage of the King, followed by an edict, known as the Pragmatic Sanction, repealing the Salic Law which had been introduced with the first Bourbon, and restoring the ancient Castilian custom under which women were capable of succeeding to the crown. A daughter was shortly afterwards born to the new Queen, Maria Christina of Naples. On the legality of the Pragmatic Sanction the opinions of publicists differed; it was judged, however, by Europe at large not from the point of view of antiquarian theory, but with direct reference to its immediate effect. The three Eastern Courts emphatically condemned it, as an interference with established monarchical right, and as a blow to the cause of European absolutism through the alliance which it would almost certainly produce between the supplanters of Don Carlos and the Liberals of the Spanish Peninsula. To the clerical and reactionary party at Madrid, it amounted to nothing less than a sentence of destruction, and the utmost pressure was brought to bear upon the weak and dying King with the object of inducing him to undo the alleged wrong which he had done to his brother. In a moment of prostration Ferdinand revoked the Pragmatic Sanction; but, subsequently, regaining some degree of strength, he re-enacted it, and appointed Christina Regent during the continuance of his illness. Don Carlos, protesting against the violation of his rights, had betaken himself to Portugal, where he made common cause with Miguel. His adherents had no intention of submitting to the change of succession. Their resentment was scarcely restrained during Ferdinand's life-time, and when, in September, 1833, his long-expected death took place, and the child Isabella was declared Queen under the Regency of her mother, open rebellion broke out, and Carlos was proclaimed King in several of the northern provinces.

For the moment the forces of the Regency seemed to be far superior to those of the insurgents, and Don Carlos failed to take advantage of the first outburst of enthusiasm and to place himself at the head of his followers. He remained in Portugal, and while Christina, as had been expected, drew nearer to the Spanish Liberals, and ultimately called to power a Liberal minister, Martinez de la Rosa, under whom a constitution was given to Spain by Royal Statute (April 10, 1834). At the same time negotiations were opened with Portugal and with the Western Powers, in the hope of forming an alliance which should drive both Miguel and Carlos from the Peninsula. On the 22nd of April, 1834, a Quadruple Treaty was signed at London, in which the Spanish Government undertook to send an army into Portugal against Miguel, the Court of Lisbon pledging itself in return to use all the means in its power to expel Don Carlos from Portuguese territory. England engaged to co-operate by means of its fleet. The assistance of France, if it should be deemed necessary for the attainment of the objects of the Treaty, was to be rendered in such manner as should be settled by common consent. In pursuance of the policy of the Treaty, and even before the formal engagement was signed, a Spanish division under General Rodil crossed the frontier and marched against Miguel. The forces of the usurper were defeated. The appearance of the English fleet and the publication of the Treaty of Quadruple Alliance rendered further resistance hopeless, and on the 22nd of May Miguel made his submission, and in return for a large pension renounced all rights to the crown, and undertook to quit the Peninsula for ever. Don Carlos, refusing similar conditions, went on board an English ship, and was conducted to London.

With respect to Portugal, the Quadruple Alliance had completely attained its object; and in so far as the Carlist cause was strengthened by the continuance of civil war in the neighbouring country, this source of strength was no doubt withdrawn from it. But in its effect upon Don Carlos himself the action of the Quadruple Alliance was worse than useless. While fulfilling the letter of the Treaty, which stipulated for the expulsion of the two pretenders from the Peninsula, the English admiral had removed Carlos from Portugal, where he was comparatively harmless, and had taken no effective guarantee that he should not re-appear in Spain itself and enforce his claim by arms. Carlos had not been made a prisoner of war; he had made no promises and incurred no obligations; nor could the British Government, after his arrival in this country, keep him in perpetual restraint. Quitting England after a short residence, he travelled in disguise through France, crossed the Pyrenees, and appeared on the 10th of July, 1834, at the headquarters of the Carlist insurgents in Navarre.

In the country immediately below the western Pyrenees, the so-called Basque Provinces, lay the chief strength of the Carlist rebellion. These provinces, which were among the most thriving and industrious parts of Spain, might seem by their very superiority an unlikely home for a movement which was directed against everything favourable to liberty, tolerance, and progress in the Spanish kingdom. But the identification of the Basques with the Carlist cause was due in fact to local, not to general, causes; and in fighting to impose a bigoted despot upon the Spanish people; they were in truth fighting to protect themselves from a closer incorporation with Spain. Down to the year 1812, the Basque provinces had preserved more than half of the essentials of independence. Owing to their position on the French frontier, the Spanish monarchy, while destroying all local independence in the interior of Spain, had uniformly treated the Basques with the same indulgence which the Government of Great Britain had shown to the Channel Islands, and which the French monarchy, though in a less degree, showed to the frontier province of Alsace in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The customs-frontier of the north of Spain was drawn to the south of these districts. The inhabitants imported what they pleased from France without paying any duties; while the heavy import dues levied at the border of the neighbouring Spanish provinces gave them the opportunity of carrying on an easy and lucrative system of smuggling. The local administration remained to a great extent in the hands of the people themselves each village preserved its active corporate life; and the effect of this survival of a vigorous local freedom was seen in the remarkable contrast described by travellers between the aspect of the Basque districts and that of Spain at large.

The Fueros, or local rights, as the Basques considered them, were in reality, when viewed as part of the order of the Spanish State, a series of exceptional privileges; and it was inevitable that the framers of the Constitution of 1812, in their attempt to create a modern administrative and political system doing justice to the whole of the nation, should sweep away the distinctions which had hitherto marked off one group of provinces from the rest of the community. The continuance of war until the return of Ferdinand, and the overthrow of the Constitution, prevented the plans of the Cortes from being at that time carried into effect; but the revolution of 1820 brought them into actual operation, and the Basques found themselves, as a result of the victory of Liberal principles, compelled to pay duties on their imports, robbed of the profits of their smuggling, and supplanted in the management of their local affairs by an army of officials from Madrid. They had gained by the Constitution little that they had not possessed before, and their losses were immediate, tangible, and substantial. The result was, that although the larger towns, like Bilbao, remained true to modern ideas, the country districts, led chiefly by priests, took up arms on behalf of the absolute monarchy, assisted the French in the restoration of despotism in 1823, and remained the permanent enemies of the constitutional cause. On the death of Ferdinand they declared at once for Don Carlos, and rose in rebellion against the Government of Queen Christina, by which they considered the privileges of the Basque Provinces and the interests of Catholic orthodoxy to be alike threatened.

There was little in the character of Don Carlos to stimulate the loyalty even of his most benighted partisans. Of military and political capacity he was totally destitute, and his continued absence in Portugal when the conflict had actually begun proved him to be wanting in the natural impulses of a brave man. It was, however, his fortune to be served by a soldier of extraordinary energy and skill; and the first reverses of the Carlists were speedily repaired, and a system of warfare organized which made an end of the hopes of easy conquest with which the Government of Christina had met the insurrection.

Fighting in a worthless cause, and commanding resources scarcely superior to those of a brigand chief, the Carlist leader, Zumalacarregui, inflicted defeat after defeat upon the generals who were sent to destroy him. The mountainous character of the country and the universal hostility of the inhabitants made the exertions of a regular soldiery useless against the alternate flights and surprises of men who knew every mountain track, and who gained information of the enemy's movements from every cottager. Terror was added by Zumalacarregui to all his other methods for demoralizing his adversary. In the exercise of reprisals he repeatedly murdered all his prisoners in cold blood, and gave to the war so savage a character that foreign Governments at last felt compelled to urge upon the belligerents some regard for the usages of the civilized world. The appearance of Don Carlos himself in the summer of 1834 raised still higher the confidence already inspired by the victories of his general. It was in vain that the old constitutionalist soldier, Mina, who had won so great a name in these provinces in 1823, returned after long exile to the scene of his exploits. Enfeebled and suffering, he was no longer able to place himself at the head of his troops, and he soon sought to be relieved from a hopeless task. His successor, the War Minister Valdes, took the field announcing his determination to act upon a new system, and to operate with his troops in mass instead of pursuing the enemy's bands with detachments. The result of this change of tactics was a defeat more ruinous and complete than had befallen any of Valdes' predecessors. He with difficulty withdrew the remainder of his army from the insurgent provinces; and the Carlist leader, master of the open country up to the borders of Castile, prepared to cross the Ebro and to march upon Madrid.

The Ministers of Queen Christina, who had up till this time professed themselves confident in their power to deal with the insurrection, could now no longer conceal the real state of affairs. Valdes himself declared that the rebellion could not be subdued without foreign aid; and after prolonged discussion in the Cabinet it was determined to appeal to France for armed assistance.

The flight of Don Carlos from England had already caused an additional article to be added to the Treaty of the Quadruple Alliance, in which France undertook so to watch the frontier of the Pyrenees that no reinforcements or munition of war should reach the Carlists from that side, while England promised to supply the troops of Queen Christina with arms and stores, and, if necessary, to render assistance with a naval force (18th August, 1834). The foreign supplies sent to the Carlists had thus been cut off both by land and sea; but more active assistance seemed indispensable if Madrid was to be saved from falling into the enemy’s hands.

The request was made to Louis Philippe's Government to occupy the Basque Provinces with a corps of twelve thousand men. Reasons of weight might be addressed to the French Court in favour of direct intervention. The victory of Don Carlos would place upon the throne of Spain a representative of all those reactionary influences throughout Europe which were in secret or in open hostility to the House of Orleans, and definitely mark the failure of that policy which had led France to combine with England in expelling Don Miguel from Portugal. On the other hand, the experience gained from earlier military enterprises in Spain might well deter even bolder politicians than those about Louis Philippe from venturing upon a task whose ultimate issues no man could confidently forecast. Napoleon had wrecked his empire in the struggle beyond the Pyrenees not less than in the march to Moscow: and the expedition of 1823, though free from military difficulties, had exposed France to the humiliating responsibility for every brutal act of a despotism which, in the very moment of its restoration, had scorned the advice of its restorers. The constitutional Government which invoked French assistance might moreover at any moment give place to a democratic faction which already harassed it within the Cortes, and which, in its alliance with the populace in many of the great cities, threatened to throw Spain into anarchy, or to restore the ill-omened constitution of 1812. But above all, the attitude of the three Eastern Powers bade the ruler of France hesitate before committing himself to a military occupation of Spanish territory. Their sympathies were with Don Carlos, and the active participation of France in the quarrel might possibly call their opposing forces into the field and provoke a general war. In view of the evident dangers arising out of the proposed intervention, the French Government, taking its stand on that clause of the Quadruple Treaty which provided that the assistance of France should be rendered in such manner as might be agreed upon by all the parties to the Treaty, addressed itself to Great Britain, inquiring whether this country would undertake a joint responsibility in the enterprise and share with France the consequences to which it might give birth. Lord Palmerston in reply declined to give the assurance required. He stated that no objection would be raised by the British Government to the entry of French troops into Spain, but that such intervention must be regarded as the work of France alone, and be undertaken by France at its own peril.

This answer sufficed for Louis Philippe and his Ministers. The Spanish Government was informed that the grant of military assistance was impossible, and that the entire public opinion of France would condemn so dangerous an undertaking. As a proof of goodwill, permission was given to Queen Christina to enrol volunteers both in England and France. Arms were supplied; and some thousands of needy or adventurous men ultimately made their way from our own country as well as from France, to earn under Colonel De Lacy Evans and other leaders a scanty harvest of profit or renown.

The first result of the rejection of the Spanish demand for the direct intervention of France was the downfall of the Minister by whom this demand had been made. His successor, Toreno, though a well-known patriot, proved unable to stem the tide of revolution that was breaking over the country. City after city set up its own Junta, and acted as if the central government had ceased to exist. Again the appeal for help was made to Louis Philippe, and now, not so much to avert the victory of Don Carlos as to save Spain from anarchy and from the constitution of 1812. Before an answer could arrive, Toreno in his turn had passed away. Mendizabal, a banker who had been entrusted with financial business at London, and who had entered into friendly relations with Lord Palmerston, was called to office, as a politician acceptable to the democratic party, and the advocate of a close connection with England rather than with France. In spite of the confident professions of the Minister, and in spite of some assistance actually rendered by the English fleet, no real progress was made in subduing the Carlists, or in restoring administrative and financial order. The death of Zumalacarregui, who was forced by Don Carlos to turn northwards and besiege Bilbao instead of marching upon Madrid immediately after his victories, had checked the progress of the rebellion at a critical moment; but the Government, distracted and bankrupt, could not use the opportunity which thus offered itself, and the war soon blazed out anew not only in the Basque Provinces but throughout the north of Spain. For year after year the monotonous struggle continued, while Cortes succeeded Cortes and faction supplanted faction, until there remained scarcely an officer who had not lost his reputation or a politician who was not useless and discredited.

The Queen Regent, who from the necessities of her situation had for a while been the representative of the popular cause, gradually identified herself Constitution of with the interests opposed to democratic change; and although her name was still treated with some respect, and her policy was habitually attributed to the misleading advice of courtiers, her real position was well understood at Madrid, and her own resistance was known to be the principal obstacle to the restoration of the Constitution of 1812. It was therefore determined to overcome this resistance by force; and on the 13th of August, 1836, a regiment of the garrison of Madrid, won over by the Exaltados, marched upon the palace of La Granja, invaded the Queen's apartments, and compelled her to sign an edict restoring the Constitution of 1812 until the Cortes should establish that or some other. Scenes of riot and murder followed in the capital. Men of moderate opinions, alarmed at the approach of anarchy, prepared to unite with Don Carlos.

King Louis Philippe, who had just consented to strengthen the French legion by the addition of some thousands of trained soldiers, now broke entirely from the Spanish connection, and dismissed his Ministers who refused to acquiesce in this change of policy. Meanwhile the Eastern Powers and all rational partisans of absolutism besought Don Carlos to give those assurances which would satisfy the wavering mass among his opponents, and place him on the throne without the sacrifice of any right that was worth preserving. It seemed as if the opportunity was too clear to be misunderstood; but the obstinacy and narrowness of Don Carlos were proof against every call of fortune. Refusing to enter into any sort of engagement, he rendered it impossible for men to submit to him who were not willing to accept absolutism pure and simple. On the other hand, a majority of the Cortes, whose eyes were now opened to the dangers around them, accepted such modifications of the Constitution of 1812 that political stability again appeared possible (June, 1837). The danger of a general transference of all moderate elements in the State to the side of Don Carlos was averted; and, although the Carlist armies took up the offensive, menaced the capital, and made incursions into every part of Spain, the darkest period of the war was now over; and when, after undertaking in person the march upon Madrid, Don Carlos swerved aside and ultimately fell back in confusion to the Ebro, the suppression of the rebellion became a certainty. General Espartero, with whom such distinction remained as was to be gathered in this miserable war, forced back the adversary step by step, and carried fire and sword into the Basque Provinces, employing a system of devastation which alone seemed capable of exhausting the endurance of the people. Reduced to the last extremity, the Carlist leaders turned their arms against one another. The priests excommunicated the generals, and the generals shot the priests; and finally, on the 14th September, 1839, after the surrender of almost all his troops to Espartero, Don Carlos crossed the French frontier, and the conflict which during six years had barbarized and disgraced the Spanish nation reached its close.

The triumph of Queen Christina over her rivals was not of long duration. Confronted by a strong democratic party both in the Cortes and in the country, she endeavoured in vain to govern by the aid of Ministers of her own choice. Her popularity had vanished away. The scandals of her private life gave just offence to the nation, and fatally weakened her political authority. Forced by insurrection to bestow office on Espartero, as the chief of the Progressist party, she found that the concessions demanded by this general were more than she could grant, and in preference to submitting to them she resigned the Regency and quitted Spain (Oct., 1840). Espartero, after some interval, was himself appointed Regent by the Cortes. For two years he maintained himself in power, then in his turn he fell before the combined attack of his political opponents and the extreme men of his own party, and passed into exile. There remained in Spain no single person qualified to fill the vacant Regency, and in default of all other expedients the young princess Isabella, who was now in her fourteenth year, was declared of full age, and placed on the throne (Nov., 1843). Christina returned to Madrid. After some rapid changes of Ministry, a more durable Government was formed from the Moderado party under General Narvaez; and in comparison with the period that had just ended, the first few years of the new reign were years of recovery and order.

The withdrawal of Louis Philippe from his engagements after the capitulation of Maria Christina to the soldiery at La Granja in 1836 had diminished the confidence placed in the King by the British Ministry; but it had not destroyed the relations of friendship existing between the two Governments. Far more serious causes of difference arose out of the course of events in the East, and the extension of the power of Mehemet Ali, Viceroy of Egypt. The struggle between Mehemet and his sovereign, long foreseen, broke out in the year 1832.

After the establishment of the Hellenic Kingdom, the island of Crete had been given to Mehemet in return for his services to the Ottoman cause by land and sea. This concession, however, was far from satisfying the ambition of the Viceroy, and a quarrel with Abdallah, Pasha of Acre, gave him the opportunity of throwing an army into Palestine without directly rebelling against his sovereign (Nov., 1831). Ibrahim, in command of his father's forces, laid siege to Acre; and had this fortress at once fallen, it would probably have been allowed by the Sultan to remain in its conqueror's hands as an addition to his own province, since the Turkish army was not ready for war, and it was no uncommon thing in the Ottoman Empire for one provincial governor to possess himself of territory at the expense of another.

So obstinate, however, was the defence of Acre that time was given to the Porte to make preparations for war; and in the spring of 1832, after the issue of a proclamation declaring Mehemet and his son to be rebels, a Turkish army led by Hussein Pasha entered Syria.

Ibrahim, while the siege of Acre was proceeding, had overrun the surrounding country. He was now in possession of all the interior of Palestine, and the tribes of Lebanon had joined him in the expectation of gaining relief from the burdens of Turkish misgovernment. The fall of Acre, while the relieving army was still near Antioch, enabled him to throw his full strength against his opponent in the valley of the Orontes. It was the intention of the Turkish general, whose forces, though superior in number, had not the European training of Ibrahim's regiments, to meet the assault of the Egyptians in an entrenched camp near Hama. The commander of the vanguard, however, pushed forward beyond this point, and when far in advance of the main body of the army was suddenly attacked by Ibrahim at Homs. Taken at a moment of complete disorder, the Turks were put to the rout.

Their overthrow and flight so alarmed the general-in-chief that he determined to fall back upon Aleppo, leaving Antioch and all the valley of the Orontes to the enemy. Aleppo was reached, but the governor, won over by Ibrahim, closed the gates of the city against the famishing army, and forced Hussein to continue his retreat to the mountains which form the barrier between Syria and Cilicia. Here, at the pass of Beilan, he was attacked by Ibrahim, outmanoeuvred, and forced to retreat with heavy loss (July 29). The pursuit was continued through the province of Cilicia. Hussein's army, now completely demoralized, made its escape to the centre of Asia Minor; the Egyptian, after advancing as far as Mount Taurus and occupying the passes in this range, took up his quarters in the conquered country in order to refresh his army and to await reinforcements. After two months' halt he renewed his march, crossed Mount Taurus and occupied Konieh, the capital of this district. Here the last and decisive blow was struck. A new Turkish army, led by Reschid Pasha, Ibrahim's colleague in the siege of Missolonghi, advanced from the north. Against his own advice, Reschid was compelled by orders from Constantinople to risk everything in an engagement. He attacked Ibrahim at Konieh on the 21st of December, and was completely defeated. Reschid himself was made a prisoner; his army dispersed; the last forces of the Sultan were exhausted, and the road to the Bosphorus lay open before the Egyptian invader.

In this extremity the Sultan looked around for help; nor were offers of assistance wanting. The Emperor Nicholas had since the Treaty of Adrianople assumed the part of the magnanimous friend; his belief was that the Ottoman Empire might by judicious management and without further conquest be brought into a state of habitual dependence upon Russia; and before the result of the battle of Konieh was known General Muravieff had arrived at Constantinople bringing the offer of Russian help both by land and sea, and tendering his own personal services in the restoration of peace. Mahmud had to some extent been won over by the Czar's politic forbearance in the execution of the Treaty of Adrianople. His hatred of Mehemet Ali was a consuming passion; and in spite of the general conviction both of his people and of his advisers that no possible concession to a rebellious vassal could be so fatal as the protection of the hereditary enemy of Islam, he was disposed to accept the Russian tender of assistance. As a preliminary, Muravieff was sent to Alexandria with permission to cede Acre to Mehemet Ali, if in return the Viceroy would make over his fleet to the Sultan.

These were conditions on which no reasonable man could have expected that Mehemet would make peace; and the intention of the Russian Court probably was that Muravieff’s mission should fail. The envoy soon returned to Constantinople announcing that his terms were rejected. Mahmud now requested that Russian ships might be sent to the Bosphorus, and to the dismay of the French and English embassies a Russian squadron appeared before the capital. Admiral Roussin, the French ambassador, addressed a protest to the Sultan and threatened to leave Constantinople. His remonstrances induced Mahmud to consent to some more serious negotiation being opened with Mehemet Ali.

A French envoy was authorized to promise the Viceroy the governorship of Tripoli in Syria as well as Acre; his overtures, however, were not more acceptable than those of Muravieff, and Mehemet openly declared that if peace were not concluded on his own terms within six weeks, he should order Ibrahim, who had halted at Kutaya, to continue his march on the Bosphorus.

Thoroughly alarmed at this threat, and believing that no Turkish force could keep Ibrahim out of the capital, Mahmud applied to Russia for more ships and also for troops. Again Admiral Roussin urged upon the Sultan that if Syria could be reconquered only by Russian forces it was more than lost to the Porte. His arguments were supported by the Divan, and with such effect that a French diplomatist was sent to Ibrahim with power to negotiate for peace on any terms. Preliminaries were signed at Kutaya under French mediation on the 10th of April, 1833, by which the Sultan made over to his vassal not only the whole Kutaya, April, of Syria but the province of Adana which lies between Mount Taurus and the Mediterranean. After some delay these Preliminaries were ratified by Mahmud; and Ibrahim, after his dazzling success both in war and in diplomacy, commenced the evacuation of northern Anatolia.

For the moment it appeared that French influence had decisively prevailed at Constantinople, and that the troops of the Czar had been summoned from Sebastopol only to be dismissed with the ironical compliments of those who were most anxious to get rid of them. But this was not really the case. Whether the fluctuations in the Sultan's policy had been due to mere fear and irresolution, or whether they had to some extent proceeded from the desire to play off one Power against another, it was to Russia, not France, that his final confidence was given. The soldiers of the Czar were encamped by the side of the Turks on the eastern shore of the Bosphorus; his ships lay below Constantinople. Here on the 8th of July a Treaty was signed at the palace of Unkiar Skelessi, in which Russia and Turkey entered into a defensive alliance of the most intimate character, each Power pledging itself to render assistance to the other, not only against the attack of an external enemy, but in every event where its peace and security might be endangered. Russia undertook, in cases where its support should be required, to provide whatever amount of troops the Sultan should consider necessary both by sea and land, the Porte being charged with no part of the expense beyond that of the provisioning of the troops. The duration of the Treaty was fixed in the first instance for eight years. A secret article, which, however, was soon afterwards published, declared that, in order to diminish the hardens of the Porte, the Czar would not demand the material help to which the Treaty entitled him; while, in substitution for such assistance, the Porte undertook, when Russia should be at war, to close the Dardanelles to the war-ships of all nations.

By the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, Russia came nearer than it has at any time before or since to that complete ascendency at Constantinople which has been the modern object of its policy. The success of its diplomatists had in fact been too great; for, if the abstract right of the Sultan to choose his own allies had not yet been disputed by Europe at large, the clause in the Treaty which related to the Dardanelles touched the interests of every Power which possessed a naval station in the Mediterranean. By the public law of Europe the Black Sea, which until the eighteenth century was encompassed entirely by the Sultan's territory, formed no part of the open waters of the world, but a Turkish lake to which access was given through the Dardanelles only at the pleasure of the Porte. When, in the eighteenth century, Russia gained a footing on the northern shore of the Euxine, this carried with it no right to send war-ships through the straits into the Mediterranean, nor had any Power at war with Russia the right to send a fleet into the Black Sea otherwise than by the Sultan's consent.

The Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi, in making Turkey the ally of Russia against all its enemies, converted the entrance to the Black Sea into a Russian fortified post, from behind which Russia could freely send forth its ships of war into the Mediterranean, while its own ports and arsenals remained secure against attack.

England and France, which were the States whose interests were principally affected, protested against the Treaty, and stated they reserved to themselves the right of taking such action in regard to it as occasion might demand. Nor did the opposition rest with the protests of diplomatists. The attention both of the English nation and of its Government was drawn far more than hitherto to the future of the Ottoman Empire. Political writers exposed with unwearied vigour, and not without exaggeration, the designs of the Court of St. Petersburg in Asia as well as in Europe; and to this time, rather than to any earlier period, belongs the first growth of that strong national antagonism to Russia which found its satisfaction in the Crimean War, and which has by no means lost its power at the present day.

In desiring to check the extension of Russia's influence in the Levant, Great Britain and France were at one. The lines of policy, however, followed by these two States were widely divergent. Great France and Britain sought to maintain the Sultan's power in its integrity; France became in an increasing degree the patron and the friend of Mehemet Ali. Since the expedition of Napoleon to Egypt in 1793, which was itself the execution of a design formed in the reign of Louis XVI, Egypt had largely retained its hold on the imagination of the leading classes in France. Its monuments, its relics of a mighty past, touched a livelier chord among French men of letters and science than India has at any time found among ourselves; and although the hope of national conquest vanished with Napoleon's overthrow, Egypt continued to afford a field of enterprise to many a civil and military adventurer.

Mehemet’s army and navy were organized by French officers; he was surrounded by French agents and men of business; and after the conquest of Algiers had brought France on to the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the advantages of a close political relation with Egypt did not escape the notice of statesmen who saw in Gibraltar and Malta the most striking evidences of English maritime power. Moreover the personal fame of Mehemet strongly affected French opinion. His brilliant military reforms, his vigorous administration, and his specious achievements in finance created in the minds of those who were too far off to know the effects of his tyranny the belief that at the hands of this man the East might yet awaken to new life. Thus, from a real conviction of the superiority of Mehemet's rule over that of the House of Osman no less than from considerations of purely national policy, the French Government, without any public or official bond of union, gradually became the acknowledged supporters of the Egyptian conqueror, and connected his interests with their own.

Sultan Mahmud had ratified the Preliminaries of Kutaya with wrath in his heart; and from this time all his energies were bent upon the creation of a force which should wrest back the lost provinces and take revenge upon his rebellious vassal. As eager as Mehemet himself to reconstruct his form of government upon the models of the West, though far less capable of impressing upon his work the stamp of a single guiding will, thwarted moreover by the jealous interference of Russia whenever his reforms seemed likely to produce any important result, he nevertheless succeeded in introducing something of European system and discipline into his army under the guidance of foreign soldiers, among whom was a man then little known, but destined long afterwards to fill Europe with his fame, the Prussian staff-officer Moltke. On the other side Mehemet and Ibrahim knew well that the peace was no more than an armed truce, and that what had been won by arms could only be maintained by constant readiness to meet attack.

Under pressure of this military necessity, Ibrahim sacrificed whatever sources of strength were open to him in the hatred borne by his new subjects to the Turkish yoke, and in their hopes of relief from oppression under his own rule. Welcomed at first as a deliverer, he soon proved a heavier task-master than any who had gone before him. The conscription was rigorously enforced; taxation became more burdensome; the tribes who had enjoyed a wild independence in the mountains were disarmed and reduced to the level of their fellow subjects. Thus the discontent which had so greatly facilitated the conquest of the border­provinces soon turned against the conqueror himself, and one uprising after another shook Ibrahim's hold upon Mount Lebanon and the Syrian desert. The Sultan watched each outbreak against his adversary with grim joy, impatient for the moment when the re-organization of his own forces should enable him to re-enter the field and strike an overwhelming blow.

With all its characteristics of superior intelligence in the choice of means, the system of Mehemet Ali was in its end that of the genuine Oriental despot. His final object was to convert as many as possible of his subjects into soldiers, and to draw into his treasury the profits of the labour of all the rest. With this aim he gradually ousted from their rights of proprietorship the greater part of the land-owners of Egypt, and finally proclaimed the entire soil to be State­ domain, appropriating at prices fixed by himself the whole of its produce. The natural commercial intercourse of his dominions gave place to a system of monopolies carried on by the Government itself. Rapidly as this system, which was introduced into the newly-conquered provinces, filled the coffers of Mehemet Ali, it offered to the Sultan, whose paramount authority was still acknowledged, the means of inflicting a deadly injury upon him by a series of commercial treaties with the European Powers, granting to western traders a free market throughout the Ottoman Empire. Resistance to such a measure would expose Mehemet to the hostility of the whole mercantile interest of Europe; submission to it would involve the loss of a great part of that revenue on which his military power depended. It was probably with this result in view, rather than from any more obvious motive, that in the year 1838 the Sultan concluded a new commercial Treaty with England, which was soon followed by similar agreements with other States.

The import of the Sultan's commercial policy was not lost upon Mehemet, who had already determined to declare himself independent. He saw that war was inevitable, and bade Ibrahim collect his forces in the neighbourhood of Aleppo, while the generals of the Sultan massed on the upper Euphrates the troops that had been successfully employed in subduing the wild tribes of Kurdistan. The storm was seen to be gathering, and the representatives of foreign Powers urged the Sultan, but in vain, to refrain from an enterprise which might shatter his empire. Mahmud was now a dying man. Exhausted by physical excess and by the stress and passion of his long reign, he bore in his heart the same unquenchable hatreds as of old; and while assuring the ambassadors of his intention to maintain the peace, he despatched a letter to his commander-in-chief, without the knowledge of any single person, ordering him to commence hostilities. The Turkish army crossed the frontier on the 23rd of May, 1839. In the operations which followed, the advice and protests of Moltke and the other European officers at head-quarters were persistently disregarded.

The Turks were outmanoeuvred and cut off from their communications, and on the 24th of June the onslaught of Ibrahim swept them from their position at Nissib in utter rout. The whole of the artillery and stores fell into the hands of the enemy: the army dispersed. Mahmud did not live to hear of the catastrophe. Six days after the battle of Nissib was fought, and while the messenger who bore the news was still in Anatolia, he expired, leaving the throne to his son, Abdul Medjid, a youth of sixteen. Scarcely had the new Sultan been proclaimed when it became known that the Admiral, Achmet Fewzi, who had been instructed to attack the Syrian coast, had sailed into the port of Alexandria, and handed over the Turkish fleet to Mehemet Ali himself.

The very suddenness of these disasters, which left the Ottoman Empire rulerless and without defence by land or sea, contributed ultimately to its preservation, inasmuch as it impelled the Powers to the Powers to combined action, which, under less urgent pressure, would probably not have been attainable. On the announcement of the exorbitant conditions of peace demanded by Mehemet, the ambassadors addressed a collective note to the Divan, requesting that no answer might be made until the Courts had arrived at some common resolution. Soon afterwards the French and English fleets appeared at the Dardanelles, nominally to protect Constantinople against the attack of the Viceroy, in reality to guard against any sudden movement on the part of Russia. This display of force was, however, not necessary, for the Czar, in spite of some expressions to the contrary, had already convinced himself that it was impossible to act upon the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi and to make the protectorate of Turkey the affair of Russia alone. The tone which had been taken by the English Government during the last preceding years proved that any attempt to exercise exclusive power at Constantinople would have been followed by war with Great Britain, in which most, if not all, of the European Powers would have stood on the side of the latter. Abandoning therefore the hope of attaining sole control, the Russian Government addressed itself to the task of widening as far as possible the existing divergence between England and France. Nor was this difficult. The Cabinet of the Tuileries desired to see Mehemet Ali issue with increased strength from the conflict, or even to establish his dynasty at Constantinople in place of the House of Osman. Lord Palmerston, always jealous and suspicious of Louis Philippe, refused to believe that the growth of Russian power could be checked by dividing the Ottoman Empire, or that any system of Eastern policy could be safely based on the personal qualities of a ruler now past his seventieth year. He had moreover his own causes of discontent with Mehemet. The possibility of establishing an overland route to India either by way of the Euphrates or of the Red Sea had lately been engaging the attention of the English Government, and Mehemet had not improved his position by raising obstacles to either line of passage. It was partly in consequence of the hostility of Mehemet, who was now master of a great part of Arabia, and of his known devotion to French interests, that the port of Aden in the Red Sea was at this time occupied by England. If, while Russia accepted the necessity of combined European action and drew nearer to its rival, France persisted in maintaining the claim of the Viceroy to extended dominion, the exclusion of France from the European concert was the only possible result. There was no doubt as to the attitude of the remaining Powers. Metternich, whether from genuine pedantry, or in order to avoid the expression of those fears of Russia which really governed his Eastern policy, repeated his threadbare platitudes on the necessity of supporting legitimate dynasties against rebels, and spoke of the victor of Konieh and Nissib as if he had been a Spanish constitutionalist or a recalcitrant German professor. The Court of Berlin followed in the same general course. In all Europe Mehemet Ali had not a single ally, with the exception of the Government of Louis Philippe.

Under these circumstances it was of little avail to the Viceroy that his army stood on Turkish soil without a foe before it, and that the Sultan's fleet lay within his own harbour of Alexandria. The intrigues by which he hoped to snatch a hasty peace from the inexperience of the young Sultan failed, and he learnt in October that no arrangement which he might make with the Porte without the concurrence of the Powers would be recognized as valid.

In the meantime Russia was suggesting to the English Government one project after another for joint military action with the object of driving Mehemet from Syria and restoring this province to the Porte; and at the beginning of the following year it was determined on Metternich's proposition that a Conference should forthwith be held in London for the settlement of Eastern affairs. The irreconcilable difference between the intentions of France and those of the other Powers at once became evident. France proposed that all Syria and Egypt should be given in hereditary dominion to Mehemet Ali, with no further obligation towards the Porte than the payment of a yearly tribute. The counter-proposal of England was that Mehemet, recognizing the Sultan's authority, should have the hereditary government of Egypt alone, that he should entirely withdraw from all Northern Syria, and hold Palestine only as an ordinary governor appointed by the Porte for his lifetime.

To this proposition all the Powers with the exception of France gave their assent. Continued negotiation only brought into stronger relief the obstinacy of Lord Palmerston, and proved the impossibility of attaining complete agreement. At length, when it had been discovered that the French Cabinet was attempting to conduct a separate mediation, the Four Powers, without going through the form of asking for French sanction, signed on the 15th of July a Treaty with the Sultan pledging themselves to enforce upon Mehemet Ali the terms arranged. The Sultan undertook in the first instance to offer Mehemet Egypt in perpetuity and southern Syria for his lifetime. If this offer was not accepted within ten days, Egypt alone was to be offered. If at the end of twenty days Mehemet still remained obstinate, that offer in its turn was to be withdrawn, and the Sultan and the Allies were to take such measures as the interests of the Ottoman Empire might require.

The publication of this Treaty, excluding France as it did from the concert of Europe, produced a storm of indignation at Paris. Thiers, who more than any man had by his writings stimulated the spirit of aggressive warfare among the French people and revived the worship of Napoleon, was now at the head of the Government. His jealousy for the prestige of France, his comparative indifference to other matters when once the national honour appeared to be committed, his sanguine estimate of the power of his country, rendered him a peculiarly dangerous Minister at the existing crisis. It was not the wrongs or the danger of Mehemet Ali, but the slight offered to France, and the revived League of the Powers which had humbled it in 1814, that excited the passion of the Minister and the nation. Syria was forgotten; the cry was for the recovery of the frontier of the Rhine, and for revenge for Waterloo. New regiments were enrolled, the fleet strengthened, and the long-delayed fortification of Paris begun. Thiers himself probably looked forward to a campaign in Italy, anticipating that successfully conducted by Napoleon III in 1859, rather than to an attack upon Prussia; but the general opinion both in France itself and in other states was that, if war should break out, an invasion of Germany was inevitable.

The prospect of this invasion roused in a manner little expected the spirit of the German people. Even in the smaller states, and in the Rhenish provinces themselves, which for twenty years had shared the fortunes of France, and in which the introduction of Prussian rule in 1814 had been decidedly unpopular, a strong national movement carried everything before it; and the year 184o added to the patriotic minstrelsy of Germany a war-song, written by a Rhenish citizen, not less famous than those of 1813 and 1870. That there were revolutionary forces smouldering throughout Europe, from which France might in a general war have gained some assistance, the events of 1848 sufficiently proved; but to no single Government would a revolutionary war have been fraught with more imminent peril than to that of France itself, and to no one was this conviction more habitually present than to King Louis Philippe.

Belying upon his influence within the Chamber of Deputies, itself a body representing the wealth and the caution rather than the hot spirit of France, the King refused to read at the opening of the session in October the speech drawn up for him by Thiers, and accepted the consequent resignation of the Ministry. Guizot, who was ambassador in London, and an advocate for submission to the will of Europe, was called to office, and succeeded after long debate in gaining a vote of confidence from the Chamber. Though preparations for war continued, a policy of peace was now assured. Mehemet Ali was left to his fate; and the stubborn assurance of Lord Palmerston, which had caused so much annoyance to the English Ministry itself, received a striking justification in the face of all Europe.

The operations of the Allies against Mehemet Ali had now begun. While Prussia kept guard on the Rhine, and Russia undertook to protect Constantinople against any forward movement of Ibrahim, an Anglo-Austrian naval squadron combined with a Turkish land-force in attacking the Syrian coast towns. The mountain-tribes of the interior were again in revolt. Arms were supplied to them by the Allies, and the insurrection soon spread over the greater part of Syria. Ibrahim prepared for an obstinate defence, but his dispositions were frustrated by the extension of the area of conflict, and he was unable to prevent the coast-towns from falling one after another into the hands of the Allies. On the capture of Acre by Sir Charles Napier he abandoned all hope of maintaining himself any longer in Syria, and made his way with the wreck of his army towards the Egyptian frontier. Napier had already arrived before Alexandria, and there executed a convention with the Viceroy, by which the latter, abandoning all claim upon his other provinces, and undertaking to restore the Turkish fleet, was assured of the hereditary possession of Egypt. The convention was one which the English admiral had no authority to conclude, but it contained substantially the terms which the Allies intended to enforce; and after Mehemet had made a formal act of submission to the Sultan, the hereditary government of Egypt was conferred upon himself and his family by a decree published by the Sultan and sanctioned by the Powers. This compromise had been proposed by the French Government after the expiry of the twenty days named in the Treaty of July, and immediately before the fall of M. Thiers, but Palmerston would not then listen to any demand made under open or implied threats of war. Since that time a new and pacific Ministry had come into office; it was no part of Palmerston's policy to keep alive the antagonism between England and France; and he readily accepted an arrangement which, while it saved France from witnessing the total destruction of an ally, left Egypt to a ruler who, whatever his faults, had certainly shown a greater capacity for government than any Oriental of that age. It remained for the Powers to place upon record some authoritative statement of the law recognized by Europe with regard to the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. Russia had already virtually consented to the abrogation of the Treaty of Unkiar Skelessi. It now joined with all the other Powers, including France, in a declaration that the ancient rule of the Ottoman Empire which forbade the passage of these straits to the war-ships of all nations, except when the Porte itself should he at war, was accepted by Europe at large. Russia thus surrendered its chance of gaining by any separate arrangement with Turkey the permanent right of sending its fleets from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean, and so becoming a Mediterranean Power. On the other hand, Sebastopol and the arsenals of the Euxine remained safe against the attack of any maritime Power, unless Turkey itself should take up arms against the Czar. Having regard to the great superiority of England over Russia at sea, and to the accessibility and importance of the Euxine coast towns, it is an open question whether the removal of all international restrictions upon the passage of the Bosphorus and Dardanelles would not be more to the advantage of England than of its rival. This opinion, however, had not been urged before the Crimean War, nor has it yet been accepted in our own country.

The conclusion of the struggle of 1840 marked with great definiteness the real position which the Ottoman Empire was henceforth to occupy in its relations to the western world. Rescued by Europe at large from the alternatives of destruction at the hands of Ibrahim or complete vassalage under Russia, the Porte entered upon the condition nominally of an independent European State, really of a State existing under the protection of Europe, and responsible to Europe as well for its domestic government as for its alliances and for the conduct of its foreign policy. The necessity of conciliating the public opinion of the West was well understood by the Turkish statesman who had taken the leading part in the negotiations which freed the Porte from dependence upon Russia.

Reschid Pasha, the younger, Foreign Minister at the accession of the new Sultan, had gained in an unusual degree the regard and the confidence of the European Ministers with whom, as a diplomatist, he had been brought into contact. As the author of a wide system of reforms, it was his ambition so to purify and renovate the internal administration of the Ottoman Empire that the contrasts which it presented to the civilized order of the West should gradually disappear, and that Turkey should become not only in name but in reality a member of the European world. Stimulated no doubt by the achievements of Mehemet Ali, and anxious to win over to the side of the Porte the interest which Mehemet's partial adoption of European methods and ideas had excited on his behalf, Reschid in his scheme of reform paid an ostentatious homage to the principles of western administration and law, proclaiming the security of person and property, prohibiting the irregular infliction of punishment, recognizing the civil rights of Christians and Jews, and transferring the collection of taxes from the provincial governors to the officers of the central authority.

The friends of the Ottoman State, less experienced then than now in the value of laws made in a society where there exists no power that can enforce them, and where the agents of government are themselves the most lawless of all the public enemies, hailed in Reschid's enlightened legislation the opening of a new epoch in the life of the Christian and Oriental races subject to the Sultan. But the fall of the Minister before a palace intrigue soon proved on how slight a foundation these hopes were built. Like other Turkish reformers, Reschid had entered upon a hopeless task; and the name of the man who was once honoured as the regenerator of a great Empire is now almost forgotten.

CHAPTER XVIII.

EUROPE BEFORE 1848