The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 10

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 10

CHAPTER V

 

THE LATER PHASES OF THE CONCERT OF EUROPE

 

 

The revolutionary movement of 1830 did not destroy the influence of

Metternich in Europe. He was too able a man to be overthrown as leader

of the legitimists merely because the people were in a ferment. To his

party he was still the man to be trusted, and as legitimacy managed to

beat down revolution in most of the areas in which commotion appeared,

the scope of his power was wide, although it was evident that he could

not use it with former impunity.

 

At the same time he gave up the pretense of making the Alliance of

the Powers a federation. He was content to try to secure that concert

of action that would enable the states that leaned to legitimacy to

act together against incipient revolution; and for a time he was

successful. In anticipation of the failure of the plan to permit France

to interfere in the Spanish colonies, Canning exclaimed: “Things are

getting back to a wholesome state again. Every nation for itself and

God for us all!” But the cry of joy was premature. The time had not

returned in which each crisis was to be met in its own way, without

reference to a recognized concert of action, and the reason was the

deep consciousness of the states that certain grave questions that ever

hung over the horizon had in them the possibilities of general war.

Let one of these questions loom large, and common action was taken to

avert the threatened danger. In such way the Concert of Europe was kept

alive, and remained something to be reckoned with as a part of the

background of European policy. In spite of its temporary disuse, it was

a thing to be brought forth again if the nations decided that it was

needed to meet an emergency.

 

In fact, it reappeared many times in the course of the nineteenth

century, notably in 1840, when the so-called Eastern question became

prominent. At that time Mehemet Ali, who had made himself lord of Egypt

and seized Syria, was threatening Constantinople, having the support of

France. Russia became alarmed, made a close alliance with the sultan,

and seemed about to get that secure foothold on the Bosphorus for

which she had striven many years. Great Britain, Austria, and Prussia

resented this prospect and took steps jointly to counteract it. Their

object was to preserve Turkey from the dangers that threatened to

divide her. Before such a combination Russia was not able to stand,

and she gave up her pretensions in order to join the other three

powers. France, however, held to her purpose, supporting the adventurer

of Egypt. Thus it happened that the four Great Powers, reviving the

Concert of Europe, but leaving out the government of Louis Philippe,

had a conference in London to settle Eastern affairs. They decided

to offer Mehemet Ali certain concessions and to make war on him if

he refused to accept them. He spurned their counsel and was expelled

from Syria but was saved from utter destruction by the interference

of France, who secured a settlement by which he was left in firm

possession of Egypt, as hereditary ruler under the nominal authority of

Turkey. All the powers now united in an agreement by which Turkey was

to exclude foreign warships from the Dardanelles. Thus, by an appeal

to the principle of the Concert of Europe, a grave crisis was averted,

and war between Great Britain and Russia was avoided.

 

In 1848, seven years after the conclusion of these negotiations,

Europe was thrown into convulsions by the appearance of a new era of

revolution. France became a republic, and Germany, Austria, and Hungary

went through such violent upheavals that the existence of arbitrary

government hung for a time in the balance. Out of the struggle emerged

Napoleon III, of France, who thought some military achievement was

necessary to stabilize his power. At that time Russia was asserting

a protectorate over all Christians in Turkey, and it was generally

believed that she was about to establish vital political control.

Napoleon took up the sword against her and Great Britain came to help,

the result being the Crimean War, 1854-1856.

 

In the beginning of this struggle the Concert of Europe seemed to be

dead, but two years of heavy fighting and nearly futile losses brought

it to life again. The war, which began in an outburst of international

rivalry, ended in the Conference of Paris, 1856, in which all the

Great Powers but Prussia undertook to settle the Eastern question by

neutralizing the Euxine and the Danube and by making new allotments of

territory which were supposed to adjust boundaries in such a manner

that rivalries would disappear. The Conference went on to take up the

work of a true European congress by agreeing upon the Declaration of

Paris, in which were assembled a body of rules regulating neutral trade

in time of war. England gave up her long defended pretension to seize

enemy goods on neutral ships and neutral goods on enemy ships, and in

return gained the recognition that privateering was unlawful. Thus the

Crimean War, fought by Great Britain and France against Russia, and in

support of Turkey--with Austria and Prussia as neutrals--was at last

ended by an agreement between all the parties concerned. The nations

undertook to settle the long Eastern dispute by pledging the sultan to

reforms which it was not in his nature to carry out.

 

The next three wars were fought without respect to the Concert of

Europe. They arose from local causes and were soon determined without

the aid of the Great Powers. They were the war of Austria and France

over the liberation of Italy, 1859; the war between Prussia and

Austria, 1866, in which Prussia overthrew the Austrian predominancy in

Germany; and the Franco-Prussian war in 1870-1871, in which Prussia

crushed France and made herself the head of the German Empire. In the

first of these struggles no state could gain enough power to become

a menace to the other states, since Italy was to be the recipient of

all territory gained. Had the contest gone so far as to promise the

vast enlargement of the power of France by reason of an alliance with

enlarged Italy, interference might have resulted. In fact, the German

states began to suspect such a result, and the realization of it was

one of Napoleon’s reasons for withdrawing very unceremoniously from

the war. Here we see, therefore, that the principle of concert was not

entirely dead. The second and third wars were fought by a brilliantly

organized state, Prussia, with whose successful armies no nation cared

to make a trial of strength.

 

In 1877 Russia made war on Turkey and proceeded with such energy

that she soon forced the sultan to sign the treaty of San Stefano,

altogether in favor of Russia. The particulars of the struggle belong

to another chapter,[7] but here it is only necessary to point out that

the Concert of Europe was now suddenly revived by the Great Powers, and

Russia was forced to submit her well won victory to the Congress of

Berlin, which scaled down the awards of San Stefano until Russia might

well ask what was left of her victory. A similar thing happened in the

Balkan War of 1912-1913. Here the parties concerned had fought their

quarrel out to the end and had nearly expelled Turkey from Europe,

dividing the spoils among themselves. Then in stepped the Great Powers,

prescribing in a treaty at London the limits of gain to the successful

contestants. They acted in the interest of peace; for Austria, watching

the actions of Serbia and Greece, let it be known that she would not

allow Serbia to have Albania, and the Powers interfered in order to

prevent such action from kindling a great European war.

 

[7] See below, p. 112.

 

Thus in three notable wars, the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War,

and the Balkan War, the action of the Great Powers was not to prevent

war, but to neutralize its gains. So far did this principle go that

writers were known to suggest that war would no longer be profitable

to nations, since in a Concert of Europe the Great Powers would ever

nullify the gains of the contestants.

 

At this time concert had come to mean another thing than it meant in

the decade after the fall of Napoleon. Then it was a fixed system of

consultation and decision in anticipation of some issue that threatened

war: now it was concerted action to keep a local war from going so

far as to involve a general conflict. It was a last resort in the

presence of dire danger. A more present means of preserving peace was

the Balance of Power, which consisted in forming the states in groups

one of which balanced another group and prevented the development of

overwhelming strength. The principle was well known in the past history

of Europe, but it was never so clearly defined in the remote past as in

the last half century. For our purposes its modern phase begins after

the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-1871.

 

Before that time Prussia was strong in Europe but not over-whelmingly

great. On one side was Austria, long her enemy, and on the other was

France. Within five years they were defeated with such quick and

crushing blows that the world was startled and the Germans themselves

were as much astonished as delighted. Out of this brilliant period of

success arose the German Empire, with Prussia for its corner-stone and

Bismarck for its builder and guardian. Immediately a singular thing

happened. One would hardly expect that a beaten state would straightway

form an alliance with the power that had humiliated her; yet such a

relation was established between Germany and Austria, and it has lasted

to this day. Where Germany has loved Austria has loved, where Germany

has hated Austria has hated, and the ambition of one has been supported

by the other. Bismarck’s policy had this state of friendship in view

and he gave Austria generous terms of peace in 1866, when she was at

his feet. Common blood bound the two states together and later led to

the hope of unification in a great Pan-German empire.

 

With France, however, the empire which Bismarck founded was to have

no such state of amity. Between them was no brotherhood, not even in

the tenuous bonds of the theory of the rights of man. Back of 1871 were

many acts of aggression, many bitter wars, and some very humiliating

experiences for states inhabited by Germans. And now the tables were

turned. France was weak and the often beaten Germans were strong and

victorious. Their vengeance was expressed in the long siege of Paris,

the proclamation of the German Empire in the château of the old French

kings, the humiliating indemnity levied on the French people, and

the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine, so long in the quiet keeping

of France that they were thoroughly French in sympathy and political

purpose. Bismarck usually ruled his heart with his head, but he lost

himself for the moment when he sent a defeated neighbor under the yoke

of needless disgrace, and Germany has paid the price many times over in

maintaining a great army and parrying the diplomatic thrusts of France.

The hostile feelings thus engendered gave rise to the particular kind

of balance of power that has existed in Europe since 1871; for on

whatever side Germany was found France was on the other, and however

the elements shifted in the grouping of nations these two states were

always opponents.

 

It was Bismarck’s idea to form an alliance so powerful that no other