FORE:The Allied sovereigns and their Ministers met at Vienna, in the opening of the year 1815, in congress, to settle the boundaries of all such States as had undergone disruptions and transformations through the will of Buonaparte. They were proceeding, with the utmost composure, to rearrange the map of Europe according to their several interests and ambitions. Austria, Spain, France, Great Britain, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden had their sovereigns or their representatives there. Those for Great Britain were the Duke of Wellington, the Lords Cathcart and Clancarty, and Sir Charles Stewart. All at once a clap of political thunder shook the place, and made every astute diplomatist look aghast. It was announced that Buonaparte had escaped from Elba, and was rapidly traversing France on the way to Paris, and that his old soldiers were flocking with acclamation to his standard. It was what was certain to occurwhat every man not a cunning diplomatist must have foreseen from the first, as certainly as that a stone thrown up is sure to come down again. Yet no one seems to have foreseen it, except it were Lord Castlereagh, who, not arriving at Paris before this foolish scheme was adopted, had protested against it, and then yielded to it. On the 13th of March the ministers of the Allied Powers met, and signed a paper which, at length, was in earnest, and showed that they were now as well convinced of a simple fact as the dullest intellect had been ten years beforethat there was no use treating Buonaparte otherwise than as a wild beast. They now declared him an outlaw, a violator of treaties, and an incorrigible disturber of the peace of the world; and they delivered him over to public contempt and vengeance. Of course, the British ambassadors were immediately looked to for the means of moving the armies of these high and mighty Powers, and the Duke of Wellington to plan and to lead the military operations against the man who had once more developed himself from the Emperor of Elba into the Emperor of the French.
FORE:Such was the state of things in Canada which the Imperial Parliament was called upon to consider in the spring of 1838. The first feeling which the news of the insurrection produced in Britain was one of alarm; the next was that all the forces that could be spared should be immediately dispatched for the purpose of crushing the revolt; and a ship of the line was employed for the first time in carrying a battalion of 800 Guards across the Atlantic. The Duke of Wellington censured the Government for not having had a sufficient military force to preserve the peace in Canada, and used the oft-repeated expression that was stultified on several occasions during the latter portion of Victoria's reign, that a great nation cannot make a little war. On the 22nd of January Lord John Russell moved[447] for leave to bring in a Bill suspending the Constitution in Lower Canada for three years, and providing for the future government of that province, with a view to effecting a satisfactory settlement of the affairs of the colony. He stated that her Majesty's Government had resolved to send out an experienced statesman, of high character and position, and of well-known popular sympathies, with ample powers, and that Lord Durham had consented to go. The Government measure was carried in the House of Commons by a majority of 262 to 16, and unanimously in the Lords.Meanwhile, Buonaparte was preparing to descend like an avalanche on this absurdly inflated nation. To set himself at ease with the North, whilst thus engaged in the Peninsula, he deemed it first necessary, however, to have an interview with the Emperor of Russia in Germany. The spirit of the Germans was again rising; and notwithstanding the spies and troops of Buonaparte, his paid literatilike Johannes Müller,and his paid princeslike those of the Rhenish Confederation, Bavaria, Baden, and Würtemberg,the Germans were beginning to blush at their humiliation, and to lament the causes of it, their effeminacy, and their division into so many States, with all the consequent prejudices and intestine feuds. Prussia, which had suffered so severely for its selfish policy, and had been so cut down in territory and insulted in its honour by Napoleon, began to cherish the hope of yet redeeming itself, by a more manly spirit and a more cordial co-operation with the rest of Germany. In this work of regenerationwhich is sure to take place sooner or later, when nations have been well beaten and humiliated, and which then, in their renewed manhood, require no foreign aid for the accomplishment of their freedomall classes laboured. The king, under the inspiration of his patriotic Minister, Von Stein, began most essential reforms. He abolished the feudal servitude and forced labour under which the peasantry groaned; he made a thorough moral re-organisation of the army, admitting of promotion from the ranks; he allowed any man that had the money to purchase baronial estates; and he deprived the higher nobility of the exclusive right of possessing landed property, and of appointment to the higher civil and military posts. Von Stein, too, commenced the work of inspiring the mass of the people with a new soul of patriotism. He established a secret society, called the Tugend Bund, or union of Virtue, which was to unite nobles, statesmen, officers, and literati in one common confederation for the rescue of the country. Amongst those who entered the most enthusiastically were Colonel Schill, who had headed with great effect his troop of volunteer cavalry, Jahn, a professor at Berlin, and Moritz Arndt, a professor of Bonn, the author of the famous national song, "Was ist der Deutschen Vaterland?" in which he maintained that it was not Prussia, nor Austria, nor any other particular State, but all Germany, so far as the language extended. Scharnhorst, the commander of the Prussian army, though restricted to the prescribed number of troops, created a new army by continually exchanging trained soldiers for raw recruits, and secretly purchased an immense quantity of arms, so that, on emergency, a large body of men could be speedily assembled. He had also all the brass battery guns converted into field-pieces, and replaced by iron guns. But Napoleon's spies were everywhere. They discovered the existence of the Tugend Bund, and of the secret societies of the students, which they carried on under the old name of the Burschenschaft, or association of the students. Though Napoleon pretended to ridicule these movements, calling it mere ideology, he took every means to suppress them. The Minister, Von Stein, in consequence[566] of the contents of an intercepted letter, was outlawed; Scharnhorst, and Grüner, the head of the police, were dismissed from their offices; but it was all in vainthe tide of public feeling had now set in the right way. The same spirit was alive in Austria. Abuses were reformed; a more perfect discipline was introduced. John Philip von Stadion, the head of the Ministry, encouraged these measures; the views of the Archduke Charles were carried out on a far wider basis. A completely new institution, that of the Landwehr, or armed citizens, was set on foot. The Austrian armies were increased greatly. In 1807 the Hungarian Diet voted twelve thousand recruits; in 1808, eighty thousand; while eighty thousand organised soldiers, of whom thirty thousand were cavalry, constituted the armed reserve of this warlike nation. Napoleon remonstrated, and received very pacific answers, but the movement went on. Von Stein, now a refugee in Austria, fanned the flame there, and he and Count Münster, first Hanoverian Ambassador, and afterwards British Ambassador at St. Petersburg, were in constant correspondence with each other and with the Government of Great Britain.
FORE:This was no idle threat; the guards at Dublin castle and at the several barracks were doubled; Alborough House, commanding the road to Clontarf, was garrisoned; the streets on the north side of the city were patrolled by parties of soldiers during the night. Three war steamers were placed in the Liffey, with their guns run out, commanding the ground where the meeting was to be held; while the guns at the Pigeon House fort at the mouth of the river, right opposite Clontarf, were so placed as to sweep the road to it. The village was occupied by the 5th Dragoon Guards, the 60th Rifles, the 11th Hussars, the 54th Regiment of Infantry, and a brigade of Royal Horse Artillery; the infantry being commanded by Colonel Fane, the cavalry by Lord Cardigan, and the artillery by Colonel Higgins. The men and horses were provisioned for twenty-four hours, and each soldier was furnished with sixty rounds of ball cartridge. A crisis had now come; a collision between the troops and O'Connell's army of teetotallers was imminent, and even he could have no doubt of the[531] issue. He seemed to stand appalled on the edge of the precipice to which he had brought his deluded followers, and shrinking from the consequences, he made all possible haste to save them. As soon as the proclamation was issued, he called a special meeting of the Repeal Association, and announced that in consequence of the measures taken by the Government, which he denounced as "the most base and imbecile step ever taken," there would be no meeting at Clontarf the next day. He submitted a counter-proclamation, which was adopted and posted up that evening throughout the city beside the Government proclamation. It was also sent by special messengers to the neighbouring towns and villages. The preventive measures taken on both sides were completely successful. No mounted Repealers came in from the country, and though vast multitudes went out from Dublin to view the military demonstrations, their meeting with the Queen's forces was quite amicable. They were allowed to see the spectacle, but they were compelled to move on along the high road, which they did very good-humouredly.