A History of Modern Europe, 1792-1878 Part 41

In the Edicts by which the last King of Prussia had promised his people a Const.i.tution, it had been laid down that the representative body was to spring from the Provincial Estates, and that it was to possess, in addition to its purely consultative functions in legislation, a real power of control over all State loans and over all proposed additions to taxation.

The interdependence of the promised Parliament and the Provincial Estates had been seen at the time to endanger the success of Hardenberg's scheme; nevertheless, it was this conception which King Frederick William IV. made the very centre of his Const.i.tutional policy. A devotee to the distant past, he spoke of the Provincial Estates, which in their present form had existed only since 1823, as if they were a great national and historic inst.i.tution which had come down unchanged through centuries. His first experiment was the summoning of a Committee from these bodies to consider certain financial projects with which the Government was occupied (1842).

The labours of the Committee were insignificant, nor was its treatment at the hands of the Crown Ministers of a serious character. Frederick William, however, continued to meditate over his plans, and appointed a Commission to examine the project drawn up at his desire by the Cabinet. The agitation in favour of Parliamentary Government became more and more pressing among the educated cla.s.ses; and at length, in spite of some opposition from his brother, the Prince of Prussia, afterwards Emperor of Germany, the King determined to fulfil his father's promise and to convoke a General a.s.sembly at Berlin. On the 3rd of February, 1847, there appeared a Royal Patent, which summoned all the Provincial Estates to the capital to meet as a United Diet of the Kingdom. The Diet was to be divided into two Chambers, the Upper Chamber including the Royal Princes and highest n.o.bles, the Lower the representatives of the knights, towns, and peasants. The right of legislation was not granted to the Diet; it had, however, the right of presenting pet.i.tions on internal affairs. State-loans and new taxes were not, in time of peace, to be raised without its consent. No regular interval was fixed for the future meetings of the Diet, and its financial rights were moreover reduced by other provisions, which enacted that a United Committee from the Provincial Estates was to meet every four years for certain definite objects, and that a special Delegation was to sit each year for the transaction of business relating to the National Debt. [409]

[King Frederick William and the Diet.]

The nature of the General a.s.sembly convoked by this Edict, the functions conferred upon it, and the guarantees offered for Representative Government in the future, so little corresponded with the requirements of the nation, that the question was at once raised in Liberal circles whether the concessions thus tendered by the King ought to be accepted or rejected. The doubt which existed as to the disposition of the monarch himself was increased by the speech from the throne at the opening of the Diet (April 11). In a vigorous harangue extending over half an hour, King Frederick William, while he said much that was appropriate to the occasion, denounced the spirit of revolution that was working in the Prussian Press, warned the Deputies that they had been summoned not to advocate political theories, but to protect each the rights of his own order, and declared that no power on earth should induce him to change his natural relation to his people into a const.i.tutional one, or to permit a written sheet of paper to intervene like a second Providence between Prussia and the Almighty. So vehement was the language of the King, and so uncompromising his tone, that the proposal was forthwith made at a private conference that the Deputies should quit Berlin in a body. This extreme course was not adopted; it was determined instead to present an address to the King, laying before him in respectful language the shortcomings in the Patent of February 3rd. In the debate on this address began the Parliamentary history of Prussia. The Liberal majority in the Lower Chamber, anxious to base their cause on some foundation of positive law, treated the Edicts of Frederick William III.

defining the rights of the future Representative Body as actual statutes of the realm, although the late King had never called a Representative Body into existence. From this point of view the functions now given to Committees and Delegations were so much illegally withdrawn from the rights of the Diet. The Government, on the other hand, denied that the Diet possessed any rights or claims whatever beyond those a.s.signed to it by the Patent of February 3rd, to which it owed its origin. In receiving the address of the Chambers, the King, while expressing a desire to see the Const.i.tution further developed, repeated the principle already laid down by his Ministers, and refused to acknowledge any obligation outside those which he had himself created.

[Proceedings and Dissolution of the Diet.]

When, after a series of debates on the political questions at issue, the actual business of the Session began, the relations between the Government and the a.s.sembly grew worse rather than better. The princ.i.p.al measures submitted were the grant of a State-guarantee to certain land-banks established for the purpose of extinguishing the rent-charges on peasants'

holdings, and the issue of a public loan for the construction of railways by the State. Alleging that the former measure was not directly one of taxation, the Government, in laying it before the Diet, declared that they asked only for an opinion, and denied that the Diet possessed any right of decision. Thus challenged, as it were, to make good its claims, the Diet not only declined to a.s.sent to this guarantee, but set its veto on the proposed railway-loan. Both projects were in themselves admitted to be to the advantage of the State; their rejection by the Diet was an emphatic vindication of const.i.tutional rights which the Government seemed indisposed to acknowledge. Opposition grew more and more embittered; and when, as a preliminary to the dissolution of the Diet, the King ordered its members to proceed to the election of the Committees and Delegation named in the Edict of February 3rd, an important group declined to take part in the elections, or consented to do so only under reservations, on the ground that the Diet, and that alone, possessed the const.i.tutional control over finance which the King was about to commit to other bodies. Indignant at this protest, the King absented himself from the ceremony which brought the Diet to a close (June 26th). Amid general irritation and resentment the a.s.sembly broke up.

Nothing had resulted from its convocation but a direct exhibition of the antagonism of purpose existing between the Sovereign and the national representatives. Moderate men were alienated by the doctrines promulgated from the Throne; and an experiment which, if more wisely conducted, might possibly at the eleventh hour have saved all Germany from revolution, left the Monarchy discredited and exposed to the attack of the most violent of its foes.

[Louis Philippe.]

The train was now laid throughout central Europe; it needed but a flash from Paris to kindle the fire far and wide. That the Crown which Louis Philippe owed to one popular outbreak might be wrested from him by another, had been a thought constantly present not only to the King himself but to foreign observers during the earlier years of his reign. The period of comparative peace by which the first Republican movements after 1830 had been succeeded, the busy working of the Parliamentary system, the keen and successful pursuit of wealth which seemed to have mastered all other impulses in France, had made these fears a thing of the past. The Orleanist Monarchy had taken its place among the accredited inst.i.tutions of Europe; its chief, aged, but vigorous in mind, looked forward to the future of his dynasty, and occupied himself with plans for extending its influence or its sway beyond the limits of France itself. At one time Louis Philippe had hoped to connect his family by marriage with the Courts of Vienna or Berlin; this project had not met with encouragement; so much the more eagerly did the King watch for opportunities in another direction, and devise plans for restoring the family-union between France and Spain which had been established by Louis XIV. and which had so largely influenced the history of Europe down to the overthrow of the Bourbon Monarchy. The Crown of Spain was now held by a young girl; her sister was the next in succession; to make the House of Orleans as powerful at Madrid as it was at Paris seemed under these circ.u.mstances no impossible task to a King and a Minister who, in the interests of the dynasty, were prepared to make some sacrifice of honour and good faith.

[The Spanish Marriage, October, 1846.]

While the Carlist War was still continuing, Lord Palmerston had convinced himself that Louis Philippe intended to marry the young Queen Isabella, if possible, to one of his sons. Some years later this project was unofficially mentioned by Guizot to the English statesman, who at once caused it to be understood that England would not permit the union.

Abandoning this scheme, Louis Philippe then demanded, by a misconstruction of the Treaty of Utrecht, that the Queen's choice of a husband should be limited to the Bourbons of the Spanish or Neapolitan line. To this claim Lord Aberdeen, who had become Foreign Secretary in 1841, declined to give his a.s.sent; he stated, however, that no step would be taken by England in antagonism to such marriage, if it should be deemed desirable at Madrid.

Louis Philippe now suggested that his youngest son, the Duke of Montpensier, should wed the Infanta Fernanda, sister of the Queen of Spain.

On the express understanding that this marriage should not take place until the Queen should herself have been married and have had children, the English Cabinet a.s.sented to the proposal. That the marriages should not be simultaneous was treated by both Governments as the very heart and substance of the arrangement, inasmuch as the failure of children by the Queen's marriage would make her sister, or her sister's heir, inheritor of the Throne. This was repeatedly acknowledged by Louis Philippe and his Minister, Guizot, in the course of communications with the British Court which extended over some years. Nevertheless, in 1846, the French Amba.s.sador at Madrid, in conjunction with the Queen's mother, Maria Christina, succeeded in carrying out a plan by which the conditions laid down at London and accepted at Paris were utterly frustrated. Of the Queen's Spanish cousins, there was one, Don Francisco, who was known to be physically unfit for marriage. To this person it was determined by Maria Christina and the French Amba.s.sador that the young Isabella should be united, her sister being simultaneously married to the Duke of Montpensier.

So flagrantly was this arrangement in contradiction to the promises made at the Tuileries, that, when intelligence of it arrived at Paris, Louis Philippe declared for a moment that the Amba.s.sador must be disavowed and disgraced. Guizot, however, was of better heart than his master, and asked for delay. In the very crisis of the King's perplexity the return of Lord Palmerston to office, and the mention by him of a Prince of Saxe-Coburg as one of the candidates for the Spanish Queen's hand, afforded Guizot a pretext for declaring that Great Britain had violated its engagements towards the House of Bourbon by promoting the candidature of a Coburg. In reality the British Government had not only taken no part in a.s.sisting the candidature of the Coburg Prince, but had directly opposed it. This, however, was urged in vain at the Tuileries. Whatever may have been the original intentions of Louis Philippe or of Guizot, the temptation of securing the probable succession to the Spanish Crown was too strong to be resisted. Preliminaries were pushed forward with the utmost haste, and on the 10th of October, 1846, the marriages of Queen Isabella and her sister, as arranged by the French Amba.s.sador and the Queen-Mother, were simultaneously solemnised at Madrid. [410]

[Louis Philippe and Guizot, 1847.]

Few intrigues have been more disgraceful than that of the Spanish Marriages; none more futile. The course of history mocked its ulterior purposes; its immediate results were wholly to the injury of the House of Orleans. The cordial understanding between France and Great Britain, which had been revived after the differences of 1840, was now finally shattered, Louis Philippe stood convicted before his people of sacrificing a valuable alliance to purely dynastic ends; his Minister, the austere and sanctimonious Guizot, had to defend himself against charges which would have covered with shame the most hardened man of the world. Thus stripped of its garb of moral superiority, condemned as at once unscrupulous and unpatriotic, the Orleanist Monarchy had to meet the storm of popular discontent which was gathering over France as well as over neighbouring lands. For the lost friendship of England it was necessary to seek a subst.i.tute in the support of some Continental Power. Throwing himself into the reactionary policy of the Court of Vienna, Guizot endeavoured to establish a diplomatic concert from which England should be excluded, as France had been in 1840. There were circ.u.mstances which gave some countenance to the design. The uncompromising vigour with which Lord Palmerston supported the Liberal movement now becoming so formidable in Italy made every absolute Government in Europe his enemy; and had time been granted, the despotic Courts would possibly have united with France in some more or less open combination against the English Minister. But the moments were now numbered; and ere the projected league could take substance, the whirlwind descended before which Louis Philippe and his Minister were the first to fall.

[Demand for Parliamentary Reform.]

A demand for the reform of the French Parliamentary system had been made when Guizot was entering upon office in the midst of the Oriental crisis of 1840. It had then been silenced and repressed by all the means at the disposal of the Executive; King Louis Philippe being convinced that with a more democratic Chamber the maintenance of his own policy of peace would be impossible. The demand was now raised again with far greater energy.

Although the franchise had been lowered after the Revolution of July, it was still so high that not one person in a hundred and fifty possessed a vote, while the property-qualification which was imposed upon the Deputies themselves excluded from the Chamber all but men of substantial wealth.

Moreover, there existed no law prohibiting the holders of administrative posts under the Government from sitting in the a.s.sembly. The consequence was that more than one-third of the Deputies were either officials who had secured election, or representatives who since their election had accepted from Government appointments of greater or less value. Though Parliamentary talent abounded, it was impossible that a Chamber so composed could be the representative of the nation at large. The narrowness of the franchise, the wealth of the Deputies themselves, made them, in all questions affecting the social condition of the people, a mere club of capitalists; the influence which the Crown exercised through the bestowal of offices converted those who ought to have been its controllers into its dependents, the more so as its patronage was lavished on nominal opponents even more freely than on avowed friends. Against King Louis Philippe the majority in the Chamber had in fact ceased to possess a will of its own. It represented wealth; it represented to some extent the common-sense of France; but on all current matters of dispute it only represented the executive government in another form. So thoroughly had the nation lost all hope in the a.s.sembly during the last years of Louis Philippe, that even the elections had ceased to excite interest. On the other hand, the belief in the general prevalence of corruption was every day receiving new warrant. A series of State-trials disclosed the grossest frauds in every branch of the administration, and proved that political influence was habitually used for purposes of pecuniary gain. Taxed with his tolerance of a system scarcely distinguishable from its abuses, the Minister could only turn to his own nominees in the Chamber and ask them whether they felt themselves corrupted; invited to consider some measure of Parliamentary reform, he scornfully a.s.serted his policy of resistance. Thus, hopeless of obtaining satisfaction either from the Government or from the Chamber itself, the leaders of the Opposition resolved in 1847 to appeal to the country at large; and an agitation for Parliamentary reform, based on the methods employed by O'Connell in Ireland, soon spread through the princ.i.p.al towns of France.

[Socialism.]

But there were other ideas and other forces active among the labouring population of Paris than those familiar to the politicians of the a.s.sembly.

Theories of Socialism, the property of a few thinkers and readers during the earlier years of Louis Philippe's reign, had now sunk deep among the ma.s.ses, and become, in a rough and easily apprehended form, the creed of the poor. From the time when Napoleon's fall had restored to France its faculty of thought, and, as it were, turned the soldier's eyes again upon his home, those questionings as to the basis of the social union which had occupied men's minds at an earlier epoch were once more felt and uttered.

The problem was still what it had been in the eighteenth century; the answer was that of a later age. Kings, priests, and n.o.bles had been overthrown, but misery still covered the world. In the teaching of Saint-Simon, under the Restoration, religious conceptions blended with a great industrial scheme; in the Utopia of Fourier, produced at the same fruitful period, whatever was valuable belonged to its suggestions in co-operative production. But whether the doctrine propounded was that of philosopher, or sage, or charlatan, in every case the same leading ideas were visible;--the insufficiency of the individual in isolation, the industrial basis of all social life, the concern of the community, or of its supreme authority, in the organisation of labour. It was naturally in no remote or complex form that the idea of a new social order took possession of the mind of the workman in the faubourgs of Paris. He read in Louis Blanc, the latest and most intelligible of his teachers of the right to labour, of the duty of the State to provide work for its citizens. This was something actual and tangible. For this he was ready upon occasion to take up arms; not for the purpose of extending the franchise to another handful of the Bourgeoisie, or of shifting the profits of government from one set of place-hunters to another. In antagonism to the ruling Minister the Reformers in the Chamber and the Socialists in the streets might for a moment unite their forces: but their ends were irreconcilable, and the allies of to-day were necessarily the foes of to-morrow.

[The February Revolution, 1848.]

[Feb. 22nd.]

At the close of the year 1847 the last Parliament of the Orleanist Monarchy a.s.sembled. The speech from the Throne, delivered by Louis Philippe himself, denounced in strong terms the agitation for Reform which had been carried on during the preceding months, though this agitation had, on the whole, been the work of the so-called Dynastic Opposition, which, while demanding electoral reform, was sincerely loyal to the Monarchy. The King's words were a challenge; and in the debate on the Address, the challenge was taken up by all ranks of Monarchical Liberals as well as by the small Republican section in the a.s.sembly. The Government, however, was still secure of its majority. Defeated in the votes on the Address, the Opposition determined, by way of protest, to attend a banquet to be held in the Champs Elysees on the 22nd of February by the Reform-party in Western Paris. It was at first desired that by some friendly arrangement with the Government, which had declared the banquet illegal, the possibility of recourse to violence should be avoided. Misunderstandings, however, arose, and the Government finally prohibited the banquet, and made preparations for meeting any disturbance with force of arms. The Deputies, anxious to employ none but legal means of resistance, now resolved not to attend the banquet; on the other hand, the Democratic and Socialist leaders welcomed a possible opportunity for revolt. On the morning of the 22nd ma.s.ses of men poured westwards from the workmen's quarter. The city was in confusion all day, and the erection of barricades began. Troops were posted in the streets; no serious attack, however, was made by either side, and at nightfall quiet returned.

[Feb. 23rd.]

On the next morning the National Guard of Paris was called to arms.

Throughout the struggle between Louis Philippe and the populace of Paris in the earlier years of his reign, the National Guard, which was drawn princ.i.p.ally from the trading cla.s.ses, had fought steadily for the King.

Now, however, it was at one with the Liberal Opposition in the a.s.sembly, and loudly demanded the dismissal of the Ministers. While some of the battalions interposed between the regular troops and the populace and averted a conflict, others proceeded to the Chamber with pet.i.tions for Reform. Obstinately as Louis Philippe had hitherto refused all concession, the announcement of the threatened defection of the National Guard at length convinced him that resistance was impossible. He accepted Guizot's resignation, and the Chamber heard from the fallen Minister himself that he had ceased to hold office. Although the King declined for awhile to commit the formation of a Ministry to Thiers, the recognised chief of the Opposition, and endeavoured to place a politician more acceptable to himself in office, it was felt that with the fall of Guizot all real resistance to Reform was broken. Nothing more was asked by the Parliamentary Opposition or by the middle-cla.s.s of Paris. The victory seemed to be won, the crisis at an end. In the western part of the capital congratulation and good-humour succeeded to the fear of conflict. The troops fraternised with the citizens and the National Guard; and when darkness came on, the boulevards were illuminated as if for a national festival.

[Feb. 24th.]

In the midst, however, of this rejoicing, and while the chiefs of the revolutionary societies, fearing that the opportunity had been lost for striking a blow at the Monarchy, exhorted the defenders of the barricades to maintain their positions, a band of workmen came into conflict, accidentally or of set purpose, with the troops in front of the Foreign Office. A volley was fired, which killed or wounded eighty persons. Placing the dead bodies on a waggon, and carrying them by torchlight through the streets in the workmen's quarter, the insurrectionary leaders called the people to arms. The tocsin sounded throughout the night; on the next morning the populace marched against the Tuileries. In consequence of the fall of the Ministry and the supposed reconciliation of the King with the People, whatever military dispositions had been begun had since been abandoned. At isolated points the troops fought bravely; but there was no systematic defence. Shattered by the strain of the previous days, and dismayed by the indifference of the National Guard when he rode out among them, the King, who at every epoch of his long life had shown such conspicuous courage in the presence of danger, now lost all nerve and all faculty of action. He signed an act of abdication in favour of his grandson, the Count of Paris, and fled. Behind him the victorious mob burst into the Tuileries and devastated it from cellar to roof. The Legislative Chamber, where an attempt was made to proclaim the Count of Paris King, was in its turn invaded. In uproar and tumult a Provisional Government was installed at the Hotel de Ville; and ere the day closed the news went out to Europe that the House of Orleans had ceased to reign, and that the Republic had been proclaimed. It was not over France alone, it was over the Continent at large, that the tide of revolution was breaking.

END OF VOL. II.

VOLUME III.

CHAPTER XIX.

Europe in 1789 and in 1848--Agitation in Western Germany before and after the Revolution at Paris--Austria and Hungary--The March Revolution at Vienna--Flight of Metternich--The Hungarian Diet--Hungary wins its independence--Bohemian movement--Autonomy promised to Bohemia-- Insurrection of Lombardy--Of Venice--Piedmont makes war on Austria--A general Italian war against Austria imminent--The March Days at Berlin--Frederick William IV.--A National a.s.sembly promised-- Schleswig-Holstein--Insurrection in Holstein--War between Germany and Denmark--The German Ante-Parliament--Republican rising in Baden--Meeting of the German National a.s.sembly at Frankfort--Europe generally in March, 1848--The French Provisional Government--The National Workshops--The Government and the Red Republicans--French National a.s.sembly--Riot of May 15--Measures against the National Workshops--The Four Days of June-- Cavaignac--Louis Napoleon--He is elected to the a.s.sembly--Elected President.

[Europe in 1789 and 1848.]

There were few statesmen living in 1848 who, like Metternich and like Louis Philippe, could remember the outbreak of the French Revolution. To those who could so look back across the s.p.a.ce of sixty years, a comparison of the European movements that followed the successive onslaughts upon authority in France afforded some measure of the change that had pa.s.sed over the political atmosphere of the Continent within a single lifetime. The Revolution of 1789, deeply as it stirred men's minds in neighbouring countries, had occasioned no popular outbreak on a large scale outside France. The expulsion of Charles X. in 1830 had been followed by national uprisings in Italy, Poland, and Belgium, and by a struggle for const.i.tutional government in the smaller States of Northern Germany. The downfall of Louis Philippe in 1848 at once convulsed the whole of central Europe. From the Rhenish Provinces to the Ottoman frontier there was no government but the Swiss Republic that was not menaced; there was no race which did not a.s.sert its claim to a more or less complete independence.

Communities whose long slumber had been undisturbed by the shocks of the Napoleonic period now vibrated with those same impulses which, since 1815, no pressure of absolute power had been able wholly to extinguish in Italy and Germany. The borders of the region of political discontent had been enlarged; where apathy, or immemorial loyalty to some distant crown, had long closed the ear to the voices of the new age, now all was restlessness, all eager expectation of the dawning epoch of national life. This was especially the case with the Slavic races included in the Austrian Empire, races which during the earlier years of this century had been wholly mute.

These in their turn now felt the breath of patriotism, and claimed the right of self-government. Distinct as the ideas of national independence and of const.i.tutional liberty are in themselves, they were not distinct in their operation over a great part of Europe in 1848; and this epoch will be wrongly conceived if it is viewed as no more than a repet.i.tion on a large scale of the democratic outbreak of Paris with which it opened. More was sought in Europe in 1848 than the subst.i.tution of popular for monarchical or aristocratic rule. The effort to make the State one with the nation excited wider interests than the effort to enlarge and equalise citizen rights; and it is in the action of this principle of nationality that we find the explanation of tendencies of the epoch which appear at first view to be in direct conflict with one another. In Germany a single race was divided under many Governments: here the national instinct impelled to unity. In Austria a variety of races was held together by one crown: here the national instinct impelled to separation. In both these States, as in Italy, where the predominance of the foreigner and the continuance of despotic government were in a peculiar manner connected with one another, the efforts of 1848 failed; but the problems which then agitated Europe could not long be set aside, and the solution of them complete, in the case of Germany and Italy, partial and tentative in the case of Austria, renders the succeeding twenty-five years a memorable period in European history.

[Agitation in Western Germany.]

The sudden disappearance of the Orleanist monarchy and the proclamation of the Republic at Paris struck with dismay the Governments beyond the Rhine.

Difficulties were already gathering round them, opposition among their own subjects was daily becoming more formidable and more outspoken. In Western Germany a meeting of Liberal deputies had been held in the autumn of 1847, in which the reform of the Federal Const.i.tution and the establishment of a German Parliament had been demanded: a Republican or revolutionary party, small but virulent, had also its own avowed policy and its recognised organs in the press. No sooner had the news of the Revolution at Paris pa.s.sed the frontier than in all the minor German States the cry for reform became irresistible. Ministers everywhere resigned; the popular demands were granted; and men were called to office whose names were identified with the struggle for the freedom of the Press, for trial by jury, and for the reform of the Federal Const.i.tution. The Federal Diet itself, so long the instrument of absolutism, bowed beneath the stress of the time, abolished the laws of censorship, and invited the Governments to send Commissioners to Frankfort to discuss the reorganisation of Germany. It was not, however, at Frankfort or at the minor capitals that the conflict between authority and its antagonists was to be decided. Vienna, the stronghold of absolutism, the sanctuary from which so many interdicts had gone forth against freedom in every part of Europe, was itself invaded by the revolutionary spirit. The clear sky darkened, and Metternich found himself powerless before the storm.

[Austria.]

There had been until 1848 so complete an absence of political life in the Austrian capital, that, when the conviction suddenly burst upon all minds that the ancient order was doomed, there were neither party-leaders to confront the Government, nor plans of reform upon which any considerable body of men were agreed. The first utterances of public discontent were pet.i.tions drawn up by the Chamber of Commerce and by literary a.s.sociations.

These were vague in purport and far from aggressive in their tone. A sterner note sounded when intelligence reached the capital of the resolutions that had been pa.s.sed by the Hungarian Lower House on the 3rd of March, and of the language in which these had been enforced by Kossuth.

Casting aside all reserve, the Magyar leader had declared that the reigning dynasty could only be saved by granting to Hungary a responsible Ministry drawn from the Diet itself, and by establishing const.i.tutional government throughout the Austrian dominions. "From the charnel-house of the Viennese system," he cried, "a poison-laden atmosphere steals over us, which paralyses our nerves and bows us when we would soar. The future of Hungary can never be secure while in the other provinces there exists a system of government in direct antagonism to every const.i.tutional principle. Our task it is to found a happier future on the brotherhood of all the Austrian races, and to subst.i.tute for the union enforced by bayonets and police the enduring bond of a free const.i.tution." When the Hungarian a.s.sembly had thus taken into its own hands the cause of the rest of the monarchy, it was not for the citizens of Vienna to fall short in the extent of their demands.

The idea of a Const.i.tution for the Empire at large was generally accepted and it was proposed that an address embodying this demand should be sent in to the Emperor by the Provincial Estates of Lower Austria, whose meeting happened to be fixed for the 13th of March. In the meantime the students made themselves the heroes of the hour. The agitation of the city increased; rumours of State bankruptcy and of the impending repudiation of the paper currency filled all cla.s.ses with the belief that some catastrophe was near at hand. [411]

[The March Revolution at Vienna.]

The Provincial Estates of Lower Austria had long fallen into such insignificance that in ordinary times their proceedings were hardly noticed by the capital. The accident that they were now to a.s.semble in the midst of a great crisis elevated them to a sudden importance. It was believed that the decisive word would be spoken in the course of their debates; and on the morning of the 13th of March ma.s.ses of the populace, led by a procession of students, a.s.sembled round the Hall of the Diet. While the debate proceeded within, street-orators inflamed the pa.s.sions of the crowd outside. The tumult deepened; and when at length a note was let down from one of the windows of the Hall stating that the Diet were inclining to half-measures, the mob broke into uproar, and an attack was made upon the Diet Hall itself. The leading members of the Estates were compelled to place themselves at the head of a deputation, which proceeded to the Emperor's palace in order to enforce the demands of the people. The Emperor himself, who at no time was capable of paying serious attention to business, remained invisible during this and the two following days; the deputation was received by Metternich and the princ.i.p.al officers of State, who were a.s.sembled in council. Meanwhile the crowds in the streets became denser and more excited; soldiers approached, to protect the Diet Hall and to guard the environs of the palace; there was an interval of confusion; and on the advance of a new regiment, which was mistaken for an attack, the mob who had stormed the Diet Hall hurled the shattered furniture from the windows upon the soldiers' heads. A volley was now fired, which cost several lives. At the sound of the firing still deeper agitation seized the city. Barricades were erected, and the people and soldiers fought hand to hand. As evening came on, deputation after deputation pressed into the palace to urge concession upon the Government. Metternich, who, almost alone in the Council, had made light of the popular uprising, now at length consented to certain definite measures of reform. He retired into an adjoining room to draft an order abolishing the censorship of the Press.

During his absence the cry was raised among the deputations that thronged the Council-chamber, "Down with Metternich!" The old man returned, and found himself abandoned by his colleagues. There were some among them, members of the Imperial family, who had long been his opponents; others who had in vain urged him to make concessions before it was too late.

Metternich saw that the end of his career was come; he spoke a few words, marked by all the dignity and self-possession of his greatest days, and withdrew, to place his resignation in the Emperor's hands.