History of Europe 1870-1919

Charles Hazen

• Publisher: Jovian Press
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781537808987
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

THE year 1870 will long remain memorable in the annals of Europe. For in that year occurred a great and decisive war whose outcome was destined to exercise a large and profound influence upon the history of the subsequent period; whose consequences were to prove pervasive, far-reaching and unhappy, just as the four terrible years through which the world has recently passed will inevitably determine the future of the world for many decades to come...

CHAPTER I. THE TRIUMPH OF NATIONALISM IN ITALY AND GERMANY

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THE YEAR 1870 WILL LONG remain memorable in the annals of Europe. For in that year occurred a great and decisive war whose outcome was destined to exercise a large and profound influence upon the history of the subsequent period; whose consequences were to prove pervasive, far-reaching and unhappy, just as the four terrible years through which the world has recently passed will inevitably determine the future of the world for many decades to come. There was a certain tragic unity to that intervening period between the Franco-Prussian War and the World War, the shadow of the former, the dread of the latter hovering over the minds of men, full of menace, inspiring a recurrent sense of uneasiness and alarm. All the various streams of activity, all the different movements, national and international, social and economic, intellectual and spiritual, all the complex and diverse phenomena of the life of Europe during that crowded half-century took their form and color largely from the memory of war, the fear of war, the preparation for war. A period like that is surely worth studying. Indeed only if men acquire or possess a just understanding of it, only if they retain a vivid sense of its lessons and its warnings, will they be able to avert a repetition of its horrors, only thus will they have the aid of either chart or compass on their voyage into the future.

But apart from this general feeling of insecurity and apprehension, inspired by the Franco-Prussian War, that war had several immediate and specific consequences which must inevitably render the year 1870 notable in the history of modern times and which furnish a proper starting-point for this narrative. The war of 1870 completed the unification of Germany and created the German Empire. It completed, also, the unification of Italy, by giving to the kingdom, as its capital, the incomparable city of Rome. It overthrew the Second Empire in France and produced the Third Republic. It robbed France of Alsace-Lorraine for the benefit of Germany and thus embedded militarism in the life of Europe.

Of course, adequately to understand events of such moment we would be obliged to review the period before 1870, for the founding of the German Empire, of the Italian Kingdom, and of the French Republic was not something hastily improvised in that year as a result of the war. Each of these achievements had a long history behind it; each was the product of a long process of evolution. The year 1870 was only a year of culmination and fruition, the end of one period, the beginning of another.

From such a review as would satisfactorily explain the rise of modern Italy and Germany, their achievement of nationality after centuries of disunion, we are precluded here. Yet a slight sketch of the history of this remarkable transformation may be of value and, indeed, is necessary if we would have the background essential for the proper appreciation of the later period.

ITALY

A century ago Italy was not a body politic; it was only a geographical expression. There was no Italian nation, but there existed within the peninsula ten small and entirely separate states, among which the most important were the Kingdom of Piedmont or Sardinia, the Grand-Duchy of Tuscany, the Papal States, the Kingdom of Naples and the two rich provinces in the north, Lombardy and Venetia, which belonged to Austria. There was no form of political union among these states, not even that of a loose confederation, as in the case of Germany. Consequently, there was no Italian flag, no Italian reigning house, no Italian citizenship, no Italian army. Out of this jumble of petty, independent states arose, in the great decade between 1859 and 1870, the present unified Kingdom of Italy.

All through the nineteenth century there were those who felt that these millions of Italians ought to be united into a single nation, that only thus could they occupy a position in the world worthy of their past, and one that would ensure a happier future. The most thrilling and persuasive spokesman of this national aspiration was Joseph Mazzini, who lived from 1805 to 1872. Even as a boy Mazzini was impressed with the unhappiness and misery of his country, subdivided, as it was, into numerous jealous and warring states. “In the midst of the noisy, tumultuous life of the students around me I was,” he says in his autobiography, “somber and absorbed and appeared like one suddenly grown old. I childishly determined to dress always in black, fancying myself in mourning for my country.” At the age of twenty-five Mazzini was thrown into prison because of his liberalism. After his release from prison, he founded a society called “Young Italy” which was destined to be an important factor in making the new Italy. Its object was to create, by persuasion and by action, a single country, common to all. Only those under forty were to be admitted to membership, because Mazzini’s appeal was particularly to the young. “Place youth at the head of the insurgent multitude,” he said; “you know not the secret of the power hidden in these youthful hearts, nor the magic influence exercised on the masses by the voice of youth. You will find among the young a host of apostles of the new religion.” With Mazzini the liberation and unification of Italy was indeed a new religion, appealing to the loftiest emotions, entailing complete self-sacrifice, complete absorption in the ideal, and the young were to be its apostles. Theirs was to be a missionary life. He told them to travel, to bear from land to land, from village to village, the torch of liberty, to expound its advantages to the people, to establish and consecrate the cult. Let them not quail before the horrors of torture and imprisonment that might await them in the holy cause. “Ideas grow quickly when watered with the blood of martyrs.” Never did a cause have a more dauntless leader, a man of purity of life, a man of imagination, of poetry, of audacity, gifted, moreover, with a marvelous command of persuasive language and with burning enthusiasm in his heart. The response was overwhelming. By 1833 the society reckoned 60,000 members. Branches were founded everywhere. Garibaldi, whose name men were later to conjure with, joined it on the shores of the Black Sea. This is the romantic proselyting movement of the nineteenth century, all the more remarkable from the fact that its members were unknown men, bringing to their work no advantage of wealth or social position. But, as their leader wrote later, “All great national movements begin with the unknown men of the people, without influence except for the faith and will that counts not time or difficulties.”

Mazzini believed that the first thing to do in bringing about the unification of Italy was to drive Austria out of the country. Austrians were foreigners; yet they held the two richest provinces in the peninsula, Lombardy and Venetia, and so great were their resources and their power that they dominated, more or less directly, the other states. Only if they were expelled could the Italians unite and control their own destinies. They could be driven out only by war, and Mazzini believed that the Italians were numerous enough and brave enough to carry through, alone and unaided, this necessary work of liberation. After the war should succeed, Mazzini hoped and urged that Italy should be proclaimed a republic, one and indivisible. Mazzini worked at a great disadvantage, as he was early expelled from his own country and was compelled to spend nearly all his lifetime as an exile in London, hampered by paltry resources, and cut off from that intimate association with his own people which is so essential to effective leadership.

Italy was not made as Mazzini wished it to be; nevertheless is he one of the chief of the makers of Italy. He and the society he founded constituted a leavening, quickening force in the realm of ideas. Around them grew up a patriotism for a country that existed as yet only in the imagination.

Italy was made by a man who was of an utterly different type from Mazzini, Count Camillo di Cavour, one of the greatest statesmen and diplomatists in the nineteenth century. Cavour’s mind was the opposite of Mazzini’s, practical, positive, not poetical and speculative. He desired the unity and the independence of Italy. He hated Austria as the oppressor of his country, as an oppressor everywhere. But, unlike Mazzini, he did not underestimate her power, nor did he overestimate the power of his own countrymen. Cavour believed, as did all the patriots, that Austria must be driven out of Italy before any Italian regeneration could be achieved. But he did not believe with Mazzini and others that the Italians could accomplish this feat alone. In his opinion the history of the last forty years had shown that plots and insurrections would not avail. It was essential to win the aid of a great military power comparable in strength and discipline to Austria.

Cavour was a thoroughgoing liberal in all his convictions and principles. He was a great admirer of the political institutions of England, which he desired to see introduced into his own country. Night after night he had sat in the gallery of the House of Commons, seeking to make himself thoroughly familiar with its modes of procedure. If he was to study parliamentary institutions anywhere, it must be abroad, for in none of the states in Italy was there even a semblance of a parliament. Cavour demanded a parliament for his own state, the Kingdom of Piedmont. “Italy,” he said, “must make herself by means of liberty, or we must give up trying to make her.”

Now in 1848 the Kingdom of Piedmont did become a parliamentary and constitutional state. Previously the king had ruled as autocrat; henceforth he was to share his power with his people. This gave Cavour his opportunity. He was elected to the first Piedmontese parliament, was taken into the cabinet in 1850, and became prime minister in 1852. He held this position for the remainder of his life, with the exception of a few weeks, proving himself a great statesman and an incomparable diplomat.

Cavour considered that the only possible leader in the work of freeing and unifying Italy was the House of Savoy and the Piedmontese monarchy, and he felt that the proper government of the new state, if it should ever arise, would be a constitutional monarchy. He wished to make Piedmont a model state so that, when the time came, the Italians of other states would recognize her leadership and join in her exaltation as best for them all. Piedmont had a constitution and the other states had not. Cavour saw to it that she had a free political life and received a genuine training in self-government. Also he bent every energy to the development of the economic resources of the kingdom, by encouraging manufactures, by stimulating commerce, by modernizing agriculture, by building railroads. In a word he sought to make and did make Piedmont a model small state, liberal and progressive, hoping thus to win for her the Italians of the other states and the interest and approval of the countries and rulers of Western Europe.

The fundamental purpose, the constant preoccupation of this man’s life, determining every action, prompting every wish, was to gain a Great Power as an ally. In the pursuit of this elusive and supremely difficult object, year in, year out, Cavour displayed his measure as a diplomat, and stood forth finally without a peer. It is a marvelously absorbing story, from which we are precluded here because it cannot be properly presented except at length. The reader must go elsewhere for the details of this fascinating record, in which were combined, in rare harmony, sound judgment, practical sense, powers of clear, subtle, penetrating thought, unfailing attention to prosaic details, with imagination, audacity, courage, and iron nerve.

Cavour’s purpose was to unite Italy. Italy could not be united unless Austria were driven out. Austria could not be driven out except by war, and in a war Austria’s military power would be far greater than that of Piedmont. Piedmont must, therefore, have an ally whose military power would be equal to that of Austria. As France was the only other great military power on the Continent, Cavour sought to win the support of the ruler of that country, Napoleon III. He succeeded in 1858 and Napoleon promised to help Piedmont expel Austria from Italy, and to free Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic.” This was the greatest triumph of Cavour’s life, as it rendered everything else possible.

Thus in 1859 there came about a war between Austria on the one hand and Piedmont and France on the other. The latter were victorious in two great battles, that of Magenta (June 4) and of Solferino (June 24). Solferino was one of the greatest battles of the nineteenth century. It lasted eleven hours, more than 260,000 men were engaged, nearly 800 cannon. The Allies lost over 17,000 men, the Austrians about 22,000. All Lombardy was conquered, and Milan was occupied. It seemed that Venetia could be easily overrun and the termination of Austrian rule in Italy effected, and Napoleon’s statement that he would free Italy “from the Alps to the Adriatic” accomplished. Suddenly Napoleon halted in the full tide of success, sought an interview with the Emperor of Austria at Villafranca, and there on July 11, without consulting the wishes of his ally, concluded a famous armistice. The terms agreed upon by the two Emperors were: that Lombardy should pass to Piedmont, that Austria should retain Venetia, that the Italian states should form a confederation, that the rulers of Tuscany and Modena should be restored to their states, whence they had just been driven by popular uprisings.

This was not what Cavour and the Italian liberals wanted. They wished to be entirely free of Austrian influence, they wished the unity of Italy and not a confederation of small Italian states, they did not desire or intend to restore the petty princes they had overthrown, they wished the extension of the rule of the House of Savoy over the entire peninsula. All that Napoleon had done had been to secure Lombardy for Piedmont, an important service, yet far below what he had promised.

But the future of Italy was not to be determined solely by the Emperor of France and the Emperor of Austria. The people of Italy had their own ideas and were resolved to make them heard. During the war, so suddenly and unexpectedly closed, the rulers of Modena, Parma, Tuscany had been overthrown by popular uprisings and the Pope’s authority in Romagna, the northern part of his dominions, had been destroyed. The people who had accomplished this had no intention of restoring the princes they had expelled. They defied the two emperors who had decided at Villafranca that those rulers should be restored. In this they were supported diplomatically by the English Government. This was England’s great service to the Italians. “The people of the duchies have as much right to change their sovereigns,” said Lord Palmerston, “as the English people, or the French, or the Belgian, or the Swedish. The annexation of the duchies to Piedmont will be an unfathomable good to Italy.” The people of these states voted almost unanimously in favor of annexation (March 11-12, 1860). Victor Emmanuel, King of Piedmont, accepted the sovereignty thus offered him, and on April 2, 1860, the first parliament of the enlarged kingdom met in Turin. A small state of less than 5,000,000 had grown to one of 11,000,000 within a year. This was the most important change in the political system of Europe since 1815.

Napoleon III acquiesced in all this, taking for himself Savoy and Nice in return for services rendered. The Peace of Villafranca was never enforced.

THE CONQUEST OF THE KINGDOM OF NAPLES

Much had been achieved in the eventful year just described, but much remained to be achieved before the unification of Italy should be complete. Venetia, the larger part of the Papal States, and the Kingdom of Naples still stood outside. In the last, however, events now occurred which carried the process a long step forward. Early in 1860 the Sicilians rose in revolt against the despotism of their new king, Francis II. This insurrection created an opportunity for a man already famous but destined to fame far greater and to a memorable service to his country, Giuseppe Garibaldi, already the most popular military leader in Italy, and invested with a half-mythical character of invincibility and daring, the result of a very spectacular, romantic career.

Garibaldi was born at Nice in 1807. He was therefore two years younger than Mazzini and three years older than Cavour. Destined by his parents for the priesthood he preferred the sea, and for many years he lived a roving and adventurous sailor’s life. He early joined “Young Italy.” His military experience was chiefly in irregular, guerrilla fighting. He took part in the unsuccessful insurrection organized by Mazzini in Savoy in 1834, and as a result was condemned to death. He managed to escape to South America, where, for the next fourteen years, he was an exile. He participated in the abundant wars of the South American states with the famous “Italian Legion,” which he organized and commanded. Learning of the uprising of 1848 he returned to Italy, though still under the penalty of death, and immediately thousands flocked to the standard of the “hero of Montevideo” to fight under him against the Austrians. After the failure of that campaign he went, in 1849, to Rome to assume the military defense of the republic. When the city was about to fall he escaped with four thousand troops, intending to attack the Austrian power in Venetia. French and Austrian armies pursued him. He succeeded in evading them, but his army dwindled away rapidly and the chase became so hot that he was forced to escape to the Adriatic. When he landed later, his enemies were immediately in full cry again, hunting him through forests and over mountains as if he were some dangerous game. It was a wonderful exploit, rendered tragic by the death, in a farmhouse near Ravenna, of his wife Anita, who was his companion in the camp as in the home, and who was as high-spirited, as daring, as courageous as he. Garibaldi finally escaped to America and began once more the life of an exile. But his story, shot through and through with heroism and chivalry and romance, moved the Italian people to unwonted depths of enthusiasm and admiration.

For several years Garibaldi was a wanderer, sailing the seas, commander of a Peruvian bark. For some months, indeed, he was a candle maker on Staten Island, but in 1854 he returned to Italy and settled down as a farmer on the little island of Caprera. But the events of 1859 once more brought him out of his retirement. Again, as a leader of volunteers, he plunged into the war against Austria and immensely increased his reputation. He had become the idol of soldiers and adventurous spirits from one end of Italy to the other. Multitudes were ready to follow in blind confidence wherever he might lead. His name was one to conjure with. There now occurred, in 1860, the most brilliant episode of his career, the Sicilian expedition and the campaign against the Kingdom of Naples. For Garibaldi, the most redoubtable warrior of Italy, whose very name was worth an army, now decided on his own account to go to the aid of the Sicilians who had risen in revolt against their king, Francis II of Naples.

On May 5, 1860, the expedition of “The Thousand,” the “Red Shirts,” embarked from Genoa in two steamers. These were the volunteers, nearly 1,150 men, whom Garibaldi’s fame had caused to rush into the new adventure, an adventure that seemed at the moment one of utter folly. The King of Naples had 24,000 troops in Sicily and 100,000 more on the mainland. The odds against success seemed overwhelming. But fortune favored the brave. After a campaign of a few weeks, in which he was several times in great danger, and was only saved by the most reckless fighting, Garibaldi stood master of the island, helped by the Sicilian insurgents, by volunteers who had flocked from the mainland, and by the incompetency of the commanders of the Neap...

Table of contents

• CHAPTER I. THE TRIUMPH OF NATIONALISM IN ITALY AND GERMANY
• CHAPTER II. THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
• CHAPTER III. THE GERMAN EMPIRE
• CHAPTER IV. FRANCE UNDER THE THIRD REPUBLIC
• CHAPTER V. THE KINGDOM OF ITALY SINCE 1870
• CHAPTER VI. AUSTRIA-HUNGARY
• CHAPTER VII. GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND
• CHAPTER VIII. THE BRITISH EMPIRE
• CHAPTER IX. THE PARTITION OF AFRICA
• CHAPTER X. THE SMALL STATES OF EUROPE
• CHAPTER XI. THE DISRUPTION OF THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE AND THE RISE OF THE BALKAN STATES
• CHAPTER XII. RUSSIA TO THE WAR WITH JAPAN
• CHAPTER XIII. THE FAR EAST: ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND RUSSIA IN ASIA
• CHAPTER XIV. RUSSIA SINCE THE WAR WITH JAPAN
• CHAPTER XV. THE BALKAN WARS OF 1912 AND 1913
• CHAPTER XVI. THE WORLD WAR