A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 29

Secret societies, such as Metternich had imagined, came into actual being.

[301] And among those who neither sank into apathy and despair nor enrolled themselves against existing power, a new body of ideas supplanted the old loyal belief in the regeneration of Germany by its princes. The Parliamentary struggles of France, the revolutionary movements in Italy and in Spain which began at this epoch, drew the imagination away from that pictured restoration of a free Teutonic past which had proved so barren of result, and set in its place the idea of a modern universal or European Liberalism. The hatred against France, especially among the younger men, disappeared. A distinction was made between the tyrant Napoleon and the people who were now giving to the rest of the Continent the example of a free and animated public life, and illuminating the age with a political literature so systematic and so ingenious that it seemed almost like a political philosophy. The debates in the French a.s.sembly, the writings of French publicists, became the school of the Germans. Paris regained in foreign eyes something of the interest that it had possessed in 1789. Each victory or defeat of the French popular cause awoke the joy or the sorrow of German Liberals, to whom all was blank at home: and when at length the throne of the Bourbons fell, the signal for deliverance seemed to have sounded in many a city beyond the Rhine.

[France after 1818.]

[Richelieu resigns, Dec., 1818. Decazes keeps power.]

We have seen that in Central Europe the balance between liberty and reaction, wavering in 1815, definitely fell to the side of reaction at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle. It remains to trace the course of events which in France itself suspended the peaceful progress of the nation, and threw power for some years into the hands of a faction which belonged to the past. The measures carried by Decazes in 1817, which gave so much satisfaction to the French, were by no means viewed with the same approval either at London or at Vienna. The two princ.i.p.al of these were the Electoral Law, and a plan of military reorganisation which brought back great numbers of Napoleon's old officers and soldiers to the army.

Richelieu, though responsible as the head of the Ministry, felt very grave fears as to the results of this legislation. He had already become anxious and distressed when the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle met; and the events which took place in France during his absence, as well as the communications which pa.s.sed between himself and the foreign Ministers, convinced him that a change of internal policy was necessary. The busy mind of Metternich had already been scheming against French Liberalism. Alarmed at the energy shown by Decazes, the Austrian statesman had formed the design of reconciling Artois and the Ultra-Royalists to the King's Government; and he now urged Richelieu, if his old opponents could be brought to reason, to place himself at the head of a coalition of all the conservative elements in the State. [302] While the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle was sitting, the partial elections for the year 1818, the second under the new Electoral Law, took place. Among the deputies returned there were some who pa.s.sed for determined enemies of the Bourbon restoration, especially Lafayette, whose name was so closely a.s.sociated with the humiliations of the Court in 1789. Richelieu received the news with dismay, and on his return to Paris took steps which ended in the dismissal of Decazes, and the offer of a seat in the Cabinet to Villele, the Ultra-Royalist leader. But the attempted combination failed. Richelieu accordingly withdrew from office; and a new Ministry was formed, of which Decazes, who had proved himself more powerful than his a.s.sailants, was the real though not the nominal chief.

[Election of Gregoire, Sept., 1819.]

The victory of the young and popular statesman was seen with extreme displeasure by all the foreign Courts, nor was his success an enduring one.

For awhile the current of Liberal opinion in France and the favour of King Louis XVIII. enabled Decazes to hold his own against the combinations of his opponents and the ill-will of all the most powerful men in Europe. An attack made on the Electoral Law by the Upper House was defeated by the creation of sixty new Peers, among whom there were several who had been expelled in 1815. But the forces of Liberalism soon pa.s.sed beyond the Minister's own control, and his steady dependence upon Louis XVIII. now raised against him as resolute an opposition among the enemies of the House of Bourbon as among the Ultra-Royalists. In the elections of 1819 the candidates of the Ministry were beaten by men of more p.r.o.nounced opinions.

Among the new members there was one whose victory caused great astonishment and alarm. The ex-bishop Gregoire, one of the authors of the destruction of the old French Church in 1790, and mover of the resolution which established the Republic in 1792, was brought forward from his retirement and elected Deputy by the town of Gren.o.ble. To understand the panic caused by this election we must recall, not the events of the Revolution, but the legends of them which were current in 1819. The history of Gregoire by no means justifies the outcry which was raised against him; his real actions, however, formed the smallest part of the things that were alleged or believed by his enemies. It was said he had applauded the execution of King Louis XVI., when he had in fact protested against it: [303] his courageous adherence to the character of a Christian priest throughout the worst days of the Convention, his labours in organising the Const.i.tutional Church when the choice lay between that and national atheism, were nothing, or worse than nothing, in the eyes of men who felt themselves to be the despoiled heirs of that rich and aristocratic landed society, called the Feudal Church, which Gregoire had been so active in breaking up. Unluckily for himself, Gregoire, though humane in action, had not abstained from the rhodomontades against kings in general which were the fashion in 1793.

Louis XVIII., forgetting that he had himself lately made the regicide Fouche a Minister, interpreted Gregoire's election by the people of Gren.o.ble, to which the Ultra-Royalists had cunningly contributed, as a threat against the Bourbon family. He showed the displeasure usual with him when any slight was offered to his personal dignity, and drew nearer to his brother Artois and the Ultra-Royalists, whom he had hitherto shunned as his favourite Minister's worst enemies. Decazes, true to his character as the King's friend, now confessed that he had gone too far in the legislation of 1817, and that the Electoral Law, under which such a monster as Gregoire could gain a seat, required to be altered. A project of law was sketched, designed to restore the preponderance in the const.i.tuencies to the landed aristocracy. Gregoire's election was itself invalidated; and the Ministers who refused to follow Decazes in his new policy of compromise were dismissed from their posts.

[Murder of the Duke of Berry, Feb. 13, 1820.]

[Reaction sets in.]

[Fall of Decazes. Richelieu Minister, Feb., 1820.]

A few months more pa.s.sed, and an event occurred which might have driven a stronger Government than that of Louis XVIII. into excesses of reaction.

The heirs to the Crown next in succession to the Count of Artois were his two sons, the Dukes of Angouleme and Berry. Angouleme was childless; the Duke of Berry was the sole hope of the elder Bourbon line, which, if he should die without a son, would, as a reigning house, become extinct, the Crown of France not descending to a female. [304] The circ.u.mstance which made Berry's life so dear to Royalists made his destruction the all-absorbing purpose of an obscure fanatic, who abhorred the Bourbon family as the lasting symbol of the foreigner's victory over France.

Louvel, a working man, had followed Napoleon to exile in Elba. After returning to his country he had dogged the footsteps of the Bourbon princes for years together, waiting for the chance of murder. On the night of the 13th of February, 1820, he seized the Duke of Berry as he was leaving the Opera House, and plunged a knife into his breast. The Duke lingered for some hours, and expired early the next morning in the presence of King Louis XVIII., the Princes, and all the Ministers. Terrible as the act was, it was the act of a single resolute mind: no human being had known of Louvel's intention. But it was impossible that political pa.s.sion should await the quiet investigation of a law-court. No murder ever produced a stronger outburst of indignation among the governing cla.s.ses, or was more skilfully turned to the advantage of party. The Liberals felt that their cause was lost. While fanatical Ultra-Royalists, abandoning themselves to a credulity worthy of the Reign of Terror, accused Decazes himself of complicity with the a.s.sa.s.sin, their leaders fixed upon the policy which was to be imposed on the King. It was in vain that Decazes brought forward his reactionary Electoral Law, and proposed to invest the officers of State with arbitrary powers of arrest and to re-establish the censorship of the Press. The Count of Artois insisted upon the dismissal of the Minister, as the only consolation which could be given to him for the murder of his son The King yielded; and, as an Ultra-Royalist administration was not yet possible, Richelieu unwillingly returned to office, a.s.sured by Artois that his friends had no other desire than to support his own firm and temperate rule.

[Progress of the reaction in France.]

[Ultra-Royalist Ministry, Dec., 1821.]

[The Congregation.]

Returning to power under such circ.u.mstances, Richelieu became, in spite of himself, the Minister of reaction. The Press was fettered, the legal safeguards of personal liberty were suspended, the electoral system was transformed by a measure which gave a double vote to men of large property.

So violent were the pa.s.sions which this retrograde march of Government excited, that for a moment Paris seemed to be on the verge of revolution.

Tumultuous scenes occurred in the streets; but the troops, on whom everything depended, obeyed the orders given to them, and the danger pa.s.sed away. The first elections under the new system reduced the Liberal party to impotence, and brought back to the Chamber a number of men who had sat in the reactionary Parliament of 1816. Villele and other Ultra-Royalists were invited to join Richelieu's Cabinet. For awhile it seemed as if the pa.s.sions of Church and aristocracy might submit to the curb of a practical statesmanship, friendly, if not devoted, to their own interests. But restraint was soon cast aside. The Count of Artois saw the road to power open, and broke his promise of supporting the Minister who had taken office at his request. Censured and thwarted in the Chamber of Deputies, Richelieu confessed that he had undertaken a hopeless task, and bade farewell to public life. King Louis, now nearing the grave, could struggle no longer against the brother who was waiting to ascend his throne. The next Ministry was nominated not by the King but by Artois. Around Villele, the real head of the Cabinet, there was placed a body of men who represented not the new France, or even that small portion of it which was called to exercise the active rights of citizenship, but the social principles of a past age, and that Catholic or Ultramontane revival which was now freshening the surface but not stirring the depths of the great ma.s.s of French religious indifference. A religious society known as the Congregation, which had struck its first roots under the storm of Republican persecution, and grown up during the Empire, a solitary yet un.o.bserved rallying-place for Catholic opponents of Napoleon's despotism, now expanded into a great organism of government. The highest in blood and in office sought membership in it: its patronage raised ambitious men to the stations they desired, its hostility made itself felt against the small as well as against the great. The spirit which now gained the ascendancy in French government was clerical even more than it was aristocratic. It was monarchical too, but rather from dislike to the secularist tone of Liberalism and from trust in the orthodoxy of the Count of Artois than from any fixed belief in absolutist principles. There might be good reason to oppose King Louis XVIII.; but what priest, what n.o.ble, could doubt the divine right of a prince who was ready to compensate the impoverished emigrants out of the public funds, and to commit the whole system of public education to the hands of the clergy?

[Bourbon rule before and after 1821.]

In the middle cla.s.s of France, which from this time began to feel itself in opposition to the Bourbon Government, there had been no moral change corresponding to that which made so great a difference between the governing authority of 1819 and that of 1822. Public opinion, though strongly affected, was not converted into something permanently unlike itself by the murder of the Duke of Berry. The courtiers, the devotees, the great ladies, who had laid a bold hand upon power, had not the nation on their side, although for a while the nation bore their sway submissively.

But the fate of the Bourbon monarchy was in fact decided when Artois and his confidants became its representatives. France might have forgotten that the Bourbons owed their throne to foreign victories; it could not be governed in perpetuity by what was called the _Parti Pretre_. Twenty years taken from the burden of age borne by Louis XVIII., twenty years of power given to Decazes, might have prolonged the rule of the restored family perhaps for some generations. If military pride found small satisfaction in the contrast between the Napoleonic age and that which immediately succeeded it, there were enough parents who valued the blood of their children, there were enough speakers and writers who valued the liberty of discussion, enough capitalists who valued quiet times, for the new order to be recognised as no unhopeful one. France has indeed seldom had a better government than it possessed between 1816 and 1820, nor could an equal period be readily named during which the French nation, as a whole, enjoyed greater happiness.

[General causes of the victory of reaction in Europe.]

Political reaction had reached its full tide in Europe generally about five years after the end of the great war. The phenomena were by no means the same in all countries, nor were the accidents of personal influence without a large share in the determination of events: yet, underlying all differences, we may trace the operation of certain great causes which were not limited by the boundaries of individual States. The cla.s.ses in which any fixed belief in const.i.tutional government existed were nowhere very large; outside the circle of state officials there was scarcely any one who had had experience in the conduct of public affairs. In some countries, as in Russia and Prussia, the conception of progress towards self-government had belonged in the first instance to the holders of power: it had exercised the imagination of a Czar, or appealed to the understanding of a Prussian Minister, eager, in the extremity of ruin, to develop every element of worth and manliness existing within his nation. The cooling of a warm fancy, the disappearance of external dangers, the very agitation which arose when the idea of liberty pa.s.sed from the rulers to their subjects, sufficed to check the course of reform. And by the side of the Kings and Ministers who for a moment had attached themselves to const.i.tutional theories there stood the old privileged orders, or what remained of them, the true party of reaction, eager to fan the first misgivings and alarms of Sovereigns, and to arrest a development more prejudicial to their own power and importance than to the dignity and security of the Crown. Further, there existed throughout Europe the fatal and ineradicable tradition of the convulsions of the first Revolution, and of the horrors of 1793. No votary of absolutism, no halting and disquieted friend of freedom, could ever be at a loss for images of woe in presaging the results of popular sovereignty; and the action of one or two infatuated a.s.sa.s.sins owed its wide influence on Europe chiefly to the ancient name and memory of Jacobinism.

There was also in the very fact that Europe had been restored to peace by the united efforts of all the governments something adverse to the success of a const.i.tutional or a Liberal party in any State. Const.i.tutional systems had indeed been much praised at the Congress of Vienna; but the group of men who actually controlled Europe in 1815, and who during the five succeeding years continued in correspondence and in close personal intercourse with one another, had, with one exception, pa.s.sed their lives in the atmosphere of absolute government, and learnt to regard the conduct of all great affairs as the business of a small number of very eminent individuals. Castlereagh, the one Minister of a const.i.tutional State, belonged to a party which, to a degree almost unequalled in Europe, identified political duty with the principle of hostility to change. It is indeed in the correspondence of the English Minister himself, and in relation to subjects of purely domestic government in England, that the community of thought which now existed between all the leading statesmen of Europe finds its most singular exhibition. Both Metternich and Hardenberg took as much interest in the suppression of Lancashire Radicalism, and in the measures of coercion which the British Government thought it necessary to pa.s.s in the year 1819, as in the chastis.e.m.e.nt of rebellious pamphleteers upon the Rhine, and in the dissolution of the students' clubs at Jena. It was indeed no very great matter for the English people, who were now close upon an era of reform, that Castlereagh received the congratulations of Vienna and Berlin for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and the right of public meeting, [305] or that Metternich believed that no one but himself knew the real import of the shouts with which the London mob greeted Sir Francis Burdett. [306] Neither the impending reform of the English Criminal Law nor the emanc.i.p.ation of Irish Catholics resulted from the enlightenment of foreign Courts, or could be hindered by their indifference. But on the Continent of Europe the progress towards const.i.tutional freedom was indeed likely to be a slow and a chequered one when the Ministers of absolutism formed so close and intimate a band, when the nations contained within them such small bodies of men in any degree versed in public affairs, and when the inst.i.tutions on which it was proposed to base the liberty of the future were so dest.i.tute of that strength which springs from connection with the past.

CHAPTER XIV.

Movements in the Mediterranean States beginning in 1820--Spain from 1814 to 1820--The South American Colonies--The Army at Cadiz: Action of Quiroga and Riego--Movement at Corunna--Ferdinand accepts the Const.i.tution of 1812--Naples from 1815 to 1820--The Court-party, the Muratists, the Carbonari--The Spanish Const.i.tution proclaimed at Naples--Const.i.tutional movement in Portugal--Alexander's proposal with regard to Spain--The Conference and Declaration of Troppau--Protest of England--Conference of Laibach--The Austrians invade Naples and restore absolute Monarchy-- Insurrection in Piedmont, which fails--Spain from 1820 to 1822--Death of Castlereagh--The Congress of Verona--Policy of England--The French invade Spain--Restoration of absolute Monarchy, and violence of the reaction-- England prohibits the conquest of the Spanish Colonies by France, and subsequently recognises their independence--Affairs in Portugal--Canning sends troops to Lisbon--The Policy of Canning--Estimate of his place in the history of Europe.

[The Mediterranean movements, beginning in 1820.]

When the guardians of Europe, at the end of the first three years of peace, scanned from their council-chamber at Aix-la-Chapelle that goodly heritage which, under Providence, their own parental care was henceforth to guard against the a.s.saults of malice and revolution, they had fixed their gaze chiefly on France, Germany, and the Netherlands, as the regions most threatened by the spirit of change. The forecast was not an accurate one.

In each of these countries Government proved during the succeeding years to be much more than a match for its real or imaginary foes: it was in the Mediterranean States, which had excited comparatively little anxiety, that the first successful attack was made upon established power. Three movements arose successively in the three southern peninsulas, at the time when Metternich was enjoying the silence which he had imposed upon Germany, and the Ultra-Royalists of France were making good the advantage which the crime of an individual and the imprudence of a party had thrown into their hands. In Spain and in Italy a body of soldiers rose on behalf of const.i.tutional government: in Greece a nation rose against the rule of the foreigner. In all three countries the issue of these movements was, after a longer or shorter interval, determined by the Northern Powers. All three movements were at first treated as identical in their character, and all alike condemned as the work of Jacobinism. But the course of events, and a change of persons in the government of one great State, brought about a truer view of the nature of the struggle in Greece. The ultimate action of Europe in the affairs of that country was different from its action in the affairs of Italy and Spain. It is now only remembered as an instance of political recklessness or stupidity that a conflict of race against race and of religion against religion should for a while have been confused by some of the leading Ministers of Europe with the attempt of a party to make the form of domestic government more liberal. The h.e.l.lenic rising had indeed no feature in common with the revolutions of Naples and Cadiz; and, although in order of time the opening of the Greek movement long preceded the close of the Spanish movement, the historian, who has neither the politician's motive for making a confusion, nor the protection of his excuse of ignorance, must in this case neglect the accidents of chronology, and treat the two as altogether apart.

[Spain between 1814 and 1820.]

King Ferdinand of Spain, after overthrowing the Const.i.tution which he found in existence on his return to his country, had conducted himself as if his object had been to show to what lengths a legitimate monarch might abuse the fidelity of his subjects and defy the public opinion of Europe. The leaders of the Cortes, whom he had arrested in 1814, after being declared innocent by one tribunal after another were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment by an arbitrary decree of the King, without even the pretence of judicial forms. Men who had been conspicuous in the struggle of the nation against Napoleon were neglected or disgraced; many of the highest posts were filled by politicians who had played a double part, or had even served under the invader. Priests and courtiers intrigued for influence over the King; even when a capable Minister was placed in power through the pressure of the amba.s.sadors, and the King's name was set to edicts of administrative reform, these edicts were made a dead letter by the powerful band who lived upon the corruption of the public service. Nothing was sacred except the interest of the clergy; this, however, was enough to keep the rural population on the King's side. The peasant, who knew that his house would not now be burnt by the French, and who heard that true religion had at length triumphed over its enemies, understood, and cared to understand, nothing more. Rumours of kingly misgovernment and oppression scarcely reached his ears. Ferdinand was still the child of Spain and of the Church; his return had been the return of peace; his rule was the victory of the Catholic faith.

[The nation satisfied: the officers discontented.]

But the acquiescence of the ma.s.s of the people was not shared by the officers of the army and the educated cla.s.ses in the towns. The overthrow of the Const.i.tution was from the first condemned by soldiers who had won distinction under the government of the Cortes; and a series of military rebellion, though isolated and on the smallest scale, showed that the course on which Ferdinand had entered was not altogether free from danger.

The attempts of General Mina in 1814, and of Porlier and Lacy in succeeding years, to raise the soldiery on behalf of the Const.i.tution, failed, through the indifference of the soldiery themselves, and the power which the priesthood exercised in garrison-towns. Discontent made its way in the army by slow degrees; and the ultimate declaration of a military party against the existing Government was due at least as much to Ferdinand's absurd system of favouritism, and to the wretched condition into which the army had been thrown, as to an attachment to the memory or the principles of const.i.tutional rule. Misgovernment made the treasury bankrupt; soldiers and sailors received no pay for years together; and the hatred with which the Spanish people had now come to regard military service is curiously shown by an order of the Government that all the beggars in Madrid and other great towns should be seized on a certain night (July 23, 1816), and enrolled in the army. [307] But the very beggars were more than a match for Ferdinand's administration. They heard of the fate in store for them, and mysteriously disappeared, so frustrating a measure by which it had been calculated that Spain would gain sixty thousand warriors.

[Struggle of Spain with its colonies, 1810-1820.]

The military revolution which at length broke out in the year 1820 was closely connected with the struggle for independence now being made by the American colonies of Spain; and in its turn it affected the course of this struggle and its final result. The colonies had refused to accept the rule either of Joseph Bonaparte or of the Cortes of Cadiz when their legitimate sovereign was dispossessed by Napoleon. While acting for the most part in Ferdinand's name, they had engaged in a struggle with the National Government of Spain. They had tasted independence; and although after the restoration of Ferdinand they would probably have recognised the rights of the Spanish Crown if certain concessions had been made, they were not disposed to return to the condition of inferiority in which they had been held during the last century, or to submit to rulers who proved themselves as cruel and vindictive in moments of victory as they were incapable of understanding the needs of the time. The struggle accordingly continued.

Regiment after regiment was sent from Spain, to perish of fever, of forced marches, or on the field. The Government of King Ferdinand, despairing of its own resources, looked around for help among the European Powers.

England would have lent its mediation, and possibly even armed a.s.sistance, if the Court of Madrid would have granted a reasonable amount of freedom to the colonies, and have opened their ports to British commerce. This, however, was not in accordance with the views of Ferdinand's advisers.

Strange as it may appear, the Spanish Government demanded that the alliance of Sovereigns, which had been framed for the purpose of resisting the principle of rebellion and disorder in Europe, should intervene against its revolted subjects on the other side of the Atlantic, and it implied that England, if acting at all, should act as the instrument of the Alliance.

[308] Encouragement was given to the design by the Courts of Paris and St.

Petersburg. Whether a continent claimed its independence, or a German schoolboy wore a forbidden ribbon in his cap, the chiefs of the Holy Alliance now a.s.sumed the frown of offended Providence, and prepared to interpose their own superior power and wisdom to save a misguided world from the consequences of its own folly. Alexander had indeed for a time hoped that the means of subduing the colonies might be supplied by himself; and in his zeal to supplant England in the good graces of Ferdinand he sold the King a fleet of war on very moderate terms. To the scandal of Europe the ships, when they reached Cadiz, turned out to be thoroughly rotten and unseaworthy. As it was certain that the Czar's fleet and the Spanish soldiers, however holy their mission, would all go to the bottom together as soon as they encountered the waves of the Atlantic, the expedition was postponed, and the affairs of America were brought before the Conference of Aix-la-Chapelle. The Envoys of Russia and France submitted a paper, in which, antic.i.p.ating the storm-warnings of more recent times, they described the dangers to which monarchical Europe would be exposed from the growth of a federation of republics in America; and 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 amba.s.sadors with reference to the terms to be offered to the Transatlantic States. [309] England, however, in spite of Lord Castlereagh's dread of revolutionary contagion, adhered to the principles which it had already laid down; and as the counsellors of King Ferdinand declined to change their policy, Spain was left to subdue its colonies by itself.

[Conspiracy in the Army of Cadiz.]

It was in the army a.s.sembled at Cadiz for embarkation in the summer of 1819 that the conspiracy against Ferdinand's Government found its leaders.

Secret societies had now spread themselves over the princ.i.p.al Spanish towns, and looked to the soldiery on the coast for the signal of revolt.

Abisbal, commander at Cadiz, intending to make himself safe against all contingencies, encouraged for awhile the plots of the discontented officers: then, foreseeing the failure of the movement, he arrested the princ.i.p.al men by a stratagem, and went off to Madrid, to reveal the conspiracy to the Court and to take credit for saving the King's crown (July, 1819). [310] If the army could have been immediately despatched to America, the danger would possibly have pa.s.sed away. This, however, was prevented by an outbreak of yellow fever, which made it necessary to send the troops into cantonments for several months. The conspirators gained time to renew their plans. The common soldiers, who had hitherto been faithful to the Government, heard in their own squalor and inaction the fearful stories of the few sick and wounded who returned from beyond the seas, and learnt to regard the order of embarkation as a sentence of death.

Several battalions were won over to the cause of const.i.tutional liberty by their commanders. The leaders imprisoned a few months before were again in communication with their followers. After the treachery of Abisbal, it was agreed to carry out the revolt without the a.s.sistance of generals or grandees. The leaders chosen were two colonels, Quiroga and Riego, of whom the former was in nominal confinement in a monastery near Medina Sidonia, twenty miles east of Cadiz, while Riego was stationed at Cabezas, a few marches distant on the great road to Seville. The first day of the year 1820 was fixed for the insurrection. It was determined that Riego should descend upon the head-quarters, which were at Arcos, and arrest the generals before they could hear anything of the movement, while Quiroga, moving from the east, gathered up the battalions stationed on the road, and threw himself into Cadiz, there to await his colleague's approach.

[Action of Quiroga and Riego, Jan. 1820.]

The first step in the enterprise proved successful. Riego, proclaiming the Const.i.tution of 1812, surprised the headquarters, seized the generals, and rallied several companies to his standard. Quiroga, however, though he gained possession of San Fernando, at the eastern end of the peninsula of Leon, on which Cadiz is situated, failed to make his entrance into Cadiz.

The commandant, hearing of the capture of the head-quarters, had closed the city gates, and arrested the princ.i.p.al inhabitants whom he suspected of being concerned in the plot. The troops within the town showed no sign of mutiny. Riego, when he arrived at the peninsula of Leon, found that only five thousand men in all had joined the good cause, while Cadiz, with a considerable garrison and fortifications of great strength, stood hostile before him. He accordingly set off with a small force to visit and win over the other regiments which were lying in the neighbouring towns and villages. The commanders, however, while not venturing to attack the mutineers, drew off their troops to a distance, and prevented them from entering into any communication with Riego. The adventurous soldier, leaving Quiroga in the peninsula of Leon, then marched into the interior of Andalusia (January 27), endeavouring to raise the inhabitants of the towns.

But the small numbers of his band, and the knowledge that Cadiz and the greater part of the army still held by the Government, prevented the inhabitants from joining the insurrection, even where they received Riego with kindness and supplied the wants of his soldiers. During week after week the little column traversed the country, now cut off from retreat, exhausted by forced marches in drenching rain, and hara.s.sed by far stronger forces sent in pursuit. The last town that Riego entered was Cordova. The enemy was close behind him. No halt was possible. He led his band, now numbering only two hundred men, into the mountains, and there bade them disperse (March 11).

[Corunna proclaims the Const.i.tution Feb. 20.]

[Abisbal's defection March 4.]

With Quiroga lying inactive in the peninsula of Leon and Riego hunted from village to village, it seemed as if the insurrection which they had begun could only end in the ruin of its leaders. But the movement had in fact effected its object. While the courtiers around King Ferdinand, unwarned by the news from Cadiz, continued their intrigues against one another, the rumour of rebellion spread over the country. If no great success had been achieved by the rebels, it was also certain that no great blow had been struck by the Government. The example of bold action had been set; the shock given at one end of the peninsula was felt at the other; and a fortnight before Riego's band dispersed, the garrison and the citizens of Corunna together declared for the Const.i.tution (February 20). From Corunna the revolutionary movement spread to Ferrol and to all the other coast-towns of Galicia. The news reached Madrid, terrifying the Government, and exciting the spirit of insurrection in the capital itself. The King summoned a council of the leading men around him. The wisest of them advised him to publish a moderate Const.i.tution, and, by convoking a Parliament immediately, to stay the movement, which would otherwise result in the restoration of the a.s.sembly and the Const.i.tution of 1812. They also urged the King to abolish the Inquisition forthwith. Ferdinand's brother, Don Carlos, the head of the clerical party, succeeded in preventing both measures. Though the generals in all quarters of Spain wrote that they could not answer for the troops, there were still hopes of keeping down the country by force of arms. Abisbal, who was at Madrid, was ordered to move with reinforcements towards the army in the south. He set out, protesting to the King that he knew the way to deal with rebels. When he reached Ocana he proclaimed the Const.i.tution himself (March 4).

[Ferdinand accepts the Const.i.tution 1812, March 9.]