countries less economically advanced, e.g. Germany and Italy, the attempt to follow French example ended in failure; but the revolt of the Belgians, for reasons partly economic and partly national, against the domination of the Dutch, Revolutions of 1830. resulted in the establishment of the independent kingdom of Belgium—the first actual breach in the territorial settlement of 1815. In Great Britain the agitation of the disfranchised middle classes, which seemed to threaten a violent revolution, ended in 1832 in the passing of the Reform Bill and their admission to political power. (See France; Germany; Italy; Belgium; English History.)
The easy success of the revolutions in the west of Europe had been due, not to any reluctance of the reactionary powers to interfere on the basis of the old agreements, but to their preoccupation with the national revolt in Poland (q.v.). In view of this, and of the attitude of Great Britain, they had to recognize the title of Louis Philippe as king of the French, merely stipulating that he should guarantee to maintain the treaties. In spite of the overthrow of the legitimate dynasty in France, and of the partition of the kingdom of the Netherlands, the territorial settlement of Vienna remained, after the revolution of 1830, substantially intact. Outside the limits of the treaties, however, fateful changes were in progress. These were determined, broadly speaking, by the two main questions that dominated international politics between the years 1831 and 1841: (1) the antagonism between the western constitutional powers, France and Great Britain, and the eastern autocratic powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia; and (2) the crisis in the Eastern question resulting from the revolt of Mehemet Ali, pasha of Egypt, against the Porte.
The strained relations between Great Britain and France, resulting from the French policy of aggression in the Spanish peninsula, which had more than once brought the two powers to the verge of war, had been eased before the fall of the government of Charles X. The peril of Anglo-French “entente.” a French hegemony over the vast colonial empire of Spain had been forestalled by Canning’s recognition of the independence of the South American republics; the intrigues of France in favour of the partisans of Dom Miguel in Portugal had been checkmated by a politic breach, on behalf of the Portuguese Liberals, of the British principle of non-intervention, and finally the chief cause of offence had been removed, in 1827, by the withdrawal of the French army of occupation from Spain. In the Greek question the two powers had acted cordially in concert; and this good understanding even the French conquest of Algiers in 1830, which laid the foundations of the French empire in Africa, had not availed to shatter; for the eyes of the Tory ministry were still fixed on France as the potential focus of revolutionary propaganda, and any over-sea possessions she might acquire were, in Wellington’s opinion, so many hostages for her good behaviour given to British sea-power. The results of the July revolution in Paris were accepted by Great Britain so soon as it became clear that Louis Philippe stood for peace and not for revolutionary aggression; the armed intervention of France in favour of the Belgians in August 1831 was stopped by the firm language of Palmerston; the French occupation of Ancona, as a countermove to Austrian aggressions in Italy, was accepted as “an incident of the balance of power”; and the intention of the king of the French to abide by the treaties, which became clearer with the consolidation of his power at home, paved the way for that entente between the two Liberal powers which lasted until 1840.
The cleavage between the fundamental principles of the two
groups of autocratic and constitutional powers was not only
apparent in their general attitude towards constitutional
and national movements, but affected also the
position taken up by them during the crisis of the
The constitutional
v. the autocratic powers.
Eastern question evoked by the revolt of Mehemet
Ali, pasha of Egypt, a crisis by which between 1839
and 1841 all other diplomatic issues were overshadowed. (See
Mehemet Ali.) During the Greek revolt the efforts of Austria
had been directed to preventing a Russian attack upon Turkey;
these efforts had failed, and Metternich’s worst fears seemed to
be realized when the Russo-Turkish campaigns of 1828–29
issued in the treaty of Adrianople (September 14, 1829)
and the apparently complete vassalage of the sultan to
the tsar. But when, in 1832, Sultan Mahmud appealed
in his despair to the emperor Nicholas to save him
from ruin at the hands of the Egyptian rebels, and, as
the result, the treaty of Unkiar Skelessi (July 8, 1833) seemed to
The Eastern question, Mehemet Ali.
place definitely in the hands of Russia the keys of the Black
Sea, it was left to France and Great Britain to give voice to
the protest of Europe. Austria, alarmed by the revolutionary
movements of 1830, accepted the fact of Russian preponderance
at Constantinople, rather than risk a breach with the autocrat
who was now the main pillar of the Holy Alliance. The emperor
Nicholas, for his part, was equally prepared to surrender some
of his ambitions in the East for the sake of the common cause,
the more so since to Russian statesmen the maintenance of
Turkey in a condition of weakness and dependence now seemed
preferable to any attempt to break it up. The result
Conventions of Münchengrätz and Berlin, 1833.
of these dispositions was the convention of Münchengrätz
(September 18, 1833) between Russia, Austria and
Prussia, by which the three powers undertook to
guarantee the integrity of the Ottoman empire. In
the following month a secret convention was signed at
Berlin between the same powers (October 15), reaffirming the
right of the powers to intervene in the internal affairs of a
friendly state at the request of its legitimate sovereign, a right
with which no third power would be allowed to interfere, such
interference to be regarded by the three powers as an act of
hostility directed against all of them.
This reconstitution of the “Holy Alliance” on a narrower basis was the work of the emperor Nicholas, whose masterful personality had by this time quite overshadowed the influence of Metternich in the councils of the autocratic powers. There was no formal breach of the Grand The Tsar Nicholas I. and Palmerston. Alliance; the “treaties” remained in force; but the French revolution of 1830 had produced a practical disruption which was every day accentuated by the attitude of the British government under the influence of Palmerston. For Palmerston had now become “the firebrand of Europe,” openly proclaiming his contempt for international law and equally openly posing as the protector of “oppressed nationalities.” “If these two powers (France and England),” wrote the tsar to King Frederick William of Prussia, “have the courage to profess loudly rebellion and the overturn of all stability, we ought to have the right and the courage to support Divine right.” This deep cleavage of principles was immediately exhibited in the attitude of the powers towards the troubles in the Spanish peninsula. In September 1833 Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, and, under the Pragmatic Affairs of Spain and Portugal. Quadruple Alliance of 1834. Sanction, his daughter Isabella succeeded under the regency of Queen Christina; in July, Dom Miguel, the absolutist pretender to the throne of Portugal, had made himself master of Lisbon. In Spain Don Carlos, Ferdinand’s brother, claimed the crown as the legitimate heir, and began the long agony of the Carlist wars; in Portugal the constitutionalists upheld in arms the rights of Queen Maria da Gloria (see Spain and Portugal). Carlists and Miguelists, making common cause, had the moral support of the allies of Münchengrätz; while France and Great Britain took the side of the Liberals. A formal alliance between the two western powers, proposed by Talleyrand, was indeed refused by Palmerston, who had no wish to commit Great Britain to an irrevocable breach with Austria and Russia, and was suspicious of the ambitions of France in Spain; but ultimately a triple alliance between Great Britain, Spain and Portugal—-with the object of restoring order in the peninsula—was converted, under pressure from the French government, into the Quadruple Alliance of the 22nd of April 1834.
The entente implied by this formal instrument was, however, more apparent than real. When, in the spring of 1835, Queen Christina applied to the Allies for help against a renewed Carlist rising, Palmerston’s suspicions were again aroused by
