The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 9

The Lost Fruits of Waterloo 9

In the conference at Troppau, Austria, Russia, and Prussia now acted

together. Up to that time Metternich had ignored the Holy Alliance.

He now brought it out as his stalking horse. The three sovereigns,

controlling the conference, issued a declaration suspending from

the Alliance any state that tolerated revolution in its borders and

declaring that the other Powers in the Alliance would bring back the

offending state by force of arms. Under the indefinite terms of the

instrument this was a legal interpretation of power, but it was not

in the spirit of the benevolent sovereign who made the Holy Alliance

possible.

 

Those of us who now favor a league or federation of states as a means

of preserving peace perpetually may well study the crisis to which a

similar system had come in the development of international relations

in 1820. The tsar’s ideal was a thing of glory thrown before a sordid

world. Not even he, as we see, was proof against the debasement of his

surroundings. If his plan had been adopted by all the nations, it is

likely that the time would have come when the confederation thus formed

would have become an agency for reaction against which liberal views

would have been unable to contend.

 

On the other hand, we must not ignore the weight that a confederation

would have had as an idea in promoting respect for liberal government.

If it had been established under the protection of the tsar, it may

well have been that Metternich would not have taken up the crusade of

legitimacy, that the tsar and Castlereagh acting together in behalf of

liberal institutions would have insured a steadier attitude on the part

of the former, and that under such circumstances the kings of Spain

and Naples would have been less inclined to the severe measures which

provoked revolution. Of course, these are mere conjectures, but it is

only fair to mention them as things to be said for the other side of

the question.

 

When we come to apply the lessons of 1815-1820 to the present day, we

must not forget that conditions are now very greatly changed. It was

the supremacy of arbitrary government in Europe that made the hopes

of 1815 come to naught. Of all the agents who then controlled affairs

in the great states of Europe, Castlereagh, next to the tsar, was the

most liberal. If a plan of union were adopted after the present war,

it might not be a success, but the failure would not be for the same

reasons as those that brought the Alliance of 1815 to a nullity.

 

Castlereagh made a protest against the purposes of the three Powers

at Troppau in which were some telling arguments against such a league

as was threatening. They were well made and would be applicable to

the situation today, if it were proposed to establish a league like

that which found favor at Troppau. The plan proposed, said he, was too

general in its scope. It gave the projected confederation the right to

interfere in the internal affairs of independent states on the ground

that the general good was concerned, and if carried out the Alliance

would, in effect, be charged with the function of policing such states.

Against all this he protested, and he pointed out that so many grounds

of dissatisfaction lay in the scheme that to try to enforce it would

surely lead to counter alliances, the end of which would be war. It

ought to be said, also, that Castlereagh was opposed to giving up war

as a means of settling disputes. “The extreme right of interference,”

he said, “between nation and nation can never be made a matter of

written stipulation or be assumed as the attribute of an alliance.” If

a man takes that position he can hardly be expected to see good points

in any scheme to preserve peace perpetually.

 

The evils he pointed out are largely eliminated in the modern plans

that are offered. For example, the jurisdiction of the proposed leagues

or federations is strictly limited to the enforcement of peace. A

supreme court held by eminent judges would pass upon cases as they come

up and say whether or not the central authority should employ force.

Under the plan it would be hard to bring a purely internal question

before the court, and if brought there it would not be considered

by the judges, since the pact of the federation would specify that

such cases were not to be tried. The pact would be the constitution

of the federation, and the court would be expected to pass on the

constitutionality of measures from the standpoint of that instrument.

Under a system like that recently advocated a revolution in Naples

would have to be submitted to a court whose members were appointed from

states in which free institutions are in existence. It could not be the

tool of a Metternich. Under such a system the whim of a tsar, if such a

ruler ever again wears a crown, could not make or mar a question like

that which underlay the calling of the Conference of Troppau. So many

are the differences that it is, perhaps, not profitable to dwell longer

on this point. The study of the peace problem and the attempt to solve

it a hundred years ago is extremely interesting to one who considers

the situation now existing, but it is chiefly because the mind, having

grasped the development of the former problem and become accustomed

to see the process as a whole, is in a better state to understand

the present and to know wherein it differs from the past and in what

respect old factors are supplemented by new factors. Such lessons from

the past are open to all who will but read.

 

These reflections should not make us forget the main thread of our

story, which became relatively weak after Troppau. From that time it

was clear that Europe had no hopes of peace through coöperation under

either of the two plans that had been suggested. Almost immediately

began a train of events which gave added impulse to the dissolution of

the Alliance. In 1821 began the Greek War of Independence. Austria was

in consternation lest the revolution should spread to her own people.

Russia, however, was deeply sympathetic with the Greeks, partly through

religious affiliations and partly because the Russian people, looking

toward the possession of Constantinople, were anxious to weaken the

Turk in any of his European possessions. Alexander I showed signs

of going to war for the Greeks, and Metternich hastily sought to

counteract any such course.

 

At the same time the situation in Spain’s American colonies was

becoming more urgent, because the weakness of the government had

stimulated the South American revolutionists to renewed activity until

Mexico as well as the rest of the Continental colonies except Peru was

in successful revolt. Metternich would have helped Turkey against the

Greeks and allowed the tsar to carry out his long cherished wish of

intervening in Spain, as a means of keeping him quiet. The situation

seemed to call for another conference and after some discussion a

meeting was arranged at Verona, 1822. France was anxious to take over

the task of punishing the Spanish revolutionists, and as Russia,

Austria, and Prussia agreed to her plan, four of the five Great Powers

now stood side by side in favor of repression. They would have gone

further, and settled the fate of the American revolutionists, but

against that course Great Britain made such a protest that the question

was left open.

 

It was not definitely closed until the next year, and then through

the action of the United States, taken in association with Great

Britain. For when France had performed her task, she looked forward

to taking some of the Spanish colonies as indemnity for her expenses.

The principle of federation among the Powers was working so well that

it was considered only a natural thing to call another conference at

which France could be assigned the right of conquering the colonies.

Canning, at the head of the British government, was genuinely alarmed.

The four united Powers were willing to defy Great Britain if she stood

alone. He turned to the United States as the only ally in sight. Would

we support him in opposition to the designs of the Powers? President

Monroe, influenced by John Quincy Adams’ stout patriotism, replied

in the affirmative and went a step further; for he insisted that the

defiance of the Powers should be announced in Washington, not as a mere

expedient to meet an isolated case, but as a general policy of our

government. The Monroe Doctrine was one of the things that broke up the

Quintuple Alliance, already weakened by the alienation of Great Britain.

 

The last blow was the revolution in France in 1880, which drove the

Bourbon king into exile and made a liberal government possible. At the

same time so strong were the manifestations of republicanism in other

countries that the old conservatism was lowered in tone and chastened

in pride. From France the revolutionary movement passed into Belgium,

which the Congress of Vienna had decreed should be a part of the

kingdom of the Netherlands. So completely was the revolution successful

that even the Great Powers had to bow to it, and in a congress at

London they recognized Belgium as a separate state and saw it set up a

liberal constitution with a king at the head of the government. Several

of the small German governments also adopted more liberal forms. Poland

broke into rebellion and before its power of resistance was crushed by

Russia the infection spread into Lithuania and Podolia. At last the

arms of the tsar overpowered all resistance and peace reigned; but

the reactionaries were sobered, and the dream of a league to enforce

repression passed away.

 

Glancing backward we may see through what a development the ideas

of reform had passed. Europe, distressed by the wars of 1800-1815,

had hungered for peace. Having issued from a decade of discussion of

liberty and humanity, the friends of freedom were more than ordinarily

earnest for replacing war by an age of reason. In our own day the cause

of universal peace stands on a broader and better laid foundation than

a hundred years ago, but it is, perhaps, no more impressive. At any

rate the philosophically inclined men of the earlier period supported

Kant and Rousseau, among them, Alexander I. A considerable portion of

the world believed that the outcome of the war madness then reigning

must be an era of sanity.

 

We have seen that two plans of improvement were formed in the minds

of men who were in position to have practical influence: the tsar’s

scheme for a league, or federation, that was so strongly integrated

that the central authority should be able to enforce its commands

upon constituent states; and the plan of Castlereagh for prolonging

the existing system of coöperation in a form which we may call the

Concert of the Great Powers. We have seen that the tsar’s plan, ignored

at first, was seized on by Metternich as a possibility for enforcing

a system of reaction, that it met the opposition of Great Britain

and aroused the revolutionary protest of 1830, and thus it came to

an end. It was never the dream of any of the philosophers that a

federation should be formed which might become an engine of despotism,

yet practical use showed that such a course was within the bounds of

possibility. The mere glimpse of such a thing was enough to make Europe

prefer the old era of wars.

 

One does not have to look far into the situation to see that the real

failure of the plan was due to the wide use of arbitrary government

in Europe. Had Austria, Russia, and Prussia been ruled by the people,