A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 13

In America, the people of the United States commemorated the semi-centennial of their independence. The Fourth of July, the date of the declaration of American independence, was the great day of celebration. The day became noted in American history by the simultaneous death of two patriots: Jefferson and Adams. Thomas Jefferson's greatest achievements, as recorded by himself on his gravestone at Monticello, were his part in the declaration of American independence, in the establishment of religious freedom and in the foundation of the University at Virginia. He was the most philosophic statesman of his time in America. Much of the subsequent history of the United States was but the development of Jefferson's political ideas. His public acts and declarations foreshadowed the policies of his most worthy successors. The essentials of the Monroe Doctrine, of the emanc.i.p.ation of slaves, as well as of the doctrine of State rights and of American expansion, can all be traced back to him. Thus he has come to be venerated by one of the two great political parties of America as "The Father of Democracy."

[Sidenote: Jefferson's principles]

[Sidenote: Third term discountenanced]

Jefferson's principles were stated in his first inaugural address: "Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce and honest friends.h.i.+p with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments and all their rights as the most competent of administrations for our domestic concerns; the preservation of the general government in its whole const.i.tutional vigor, as a sheet anchor of peace at home and safety abroad.... The supremacy of civil over military authority; economy in public expense, honest payment of public debts; the diffusion of information; freedom of religion; freedom of the press and freedom of the person, under the protection of the habeas corpus and trial by jury." When Jefferson's second term as President came to an end he retired from the White House poorer than he had entered it. A third term was declined by him with these words: "To lay down a public charge at the proper period is as much a duty as to have borne it faithfully. If some termination to the services of a chief magistrate be not fixed by the Const.i.tution or supplied by practice, this office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life; and history shows how easily that degenerates into an inheritance."

Together with Was.h.i.+ngton's similar action, this established a custom which has since been followed in the North American Republic.

[Sidenote: John Adams's career]

Jefferson's predecessor, John Adams, who died on the same day, though likewise a model President, was less fortunate in his career. His administration was a struggle almost from beginning to end. The troubles with France, though not attaining the dignity of international warfare, presented all the difficulties of such a war. Adams's extreme measures against domestic danger, as embodied in his "alien and sedition laws," were unfortunate. They were in fact an infringement of the rights of free speech and personal liberty, and were with justice denounced as unconst.i.tutional and un-American. His departure from the American Bill of Rights among other things effectually prevented his re-election as President. His wisest closing act was the appointment of John Marshall to the Chief Justices.h.i.+p of the American Supreme Court.

[Sidenote: Stars of the stage]

[Sidenote: "The Last of the Mohicans"]

In the annals of the American stage the season of 1826 is remembered for the first appearance of the three great actors Edwin Forrest, Macready and James H. Hackett, the American comedian. The same year saw the first appearance of Paulding's "Three Wise Men of Gotham," and Cooper's "Last of the Mohicans."

[Sidenote: Philh.e.l.lenic efforts]

The Greek cause found friends in Switzerland, England and America. Two loans for $14,000,000 were raised in London by American and English subscriptions. Both loans were disgracefully financed. Barely one-half of the amount was finally accounted for. With the proceeds contracts were made for eight wars.h.i.+ps. The "Perseverance," a steam corvette, mounting eight 68-pound cannon, reached Nauplia in September. The "Hope," a staunch frigate of 64 guns, built in New York, arrived in December. She was rechristened the "h.e.l.las."

[Sidenote: Dom Pedro IV.]

The death of Dom Juan de Braganza in March had placed the throne of Portugal as well as that of Brazil at the disposal of his oldest son, Dom Pedro IV., at Rio. Under the terms of England's mediation of the previous year, Dom Pedro renounced the throne of Portugal in favor of his infant daughter, Maria Gloria, while at the same time he conferred upon Portugal a liberal const.i.tution, the so-called Charta de Ley, similar to that conceded to Brazil in 1822.

[Sidenote: Dom Miguel's revolt]

[Sidenote: Canning's policy]

Dom Pedro IV. had intrusted the throne of Portugal to the regency of his sister Maria Isabella, on condition that his infant daughter should marry her uncle, Dom Miguel. It was his intention that the infant Princess should be recognized as Queen, while Dom Miguel would reign as regent. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of Marquis de Chaves, instigated by Dom Miguel, several provinces revolted and declared for Miguel as absolute king. Conquered in Portugal, the insurgents retired to Spain, where they were well received.

The Portuguese const.i.tutional government called for help from England.

France threatened to invade Spain. Canning acted at once: "To those who blame the government for delay," declared Canning in Parliament, "the answer is very short. It was only last Friday that I received the official request from Portugal. On Sat.u.r.day the Ministers decided what was to be done. On Sunday our decision received the King's sanction. On Monday it was communicated to both Houses. At this very moment the troops are on their way to Portugal." It was then that Canning delivered the great speech in defence of his foreign policy which he closed with Shakespeare's famous lines:

Oh, it is excellent To have a giant's strength. And it is tyrannous To use it like a giant.

1827

[Sidenote: Portuguese revolt suppressed]

On the first day of January an English army corps under Clinton was landed at Lissabon and a squadron of eleven British s.h.i.+ps of the line came to anchor at the mouth of the Tagus. The news of this foreign intervention dismayed the revolutionists. On the banks of the Mondego the Marquis de Chaves, with 10,000 rebels, still commanded the approach to Coimbra. On January 9, a drawn battle was fought with 7,000 const.i.tutional troops under Saldanha. Next morning Dom Miguel's followers, on the news of an approaching British column, quitted the field and dispersed. The Spanish troops on the frontier disarmed those that crossed into Spain.

[Sidenote: Dissatisfaction in France]

In France, the government of Charles X., after some violent attacks in the Chambers, recalled the Swiss brigade sent to protect the royal family in Madrid. There was trouble enough at home. The clerical reaction in France brought about a popular outcry against the order of the Jesuits. On the occasion of a royal military review on April 29, some of the companies of the National Guards shared in demonstrations against them. "I am here,"

said the King, "to receive your homage, not your murmurings." The entire National Guard of Paris was disbanded by royal ordinance.

[Sidenote: Russians invade Persia]

Early in the spring the Russian forces under Paskievitch had crossed the Araxes and forced the defiles of the Persian frontier. By a rapid flank movement an army of 10,000 Persians was detached and brought to surrender.

Erivan, the bulwark of Persia, was taken by a.s.sault. The triumphant Russian column entered Pauris, the second city of the kingdom. Thence an advance was made on Teheran.

[Sidenote: Intervention in Greece favored]

These easy victories in Persia left the Czar free to resume his threatening att.i.tude toward Turkey. In this he received the hearty support of Canning.

A protocol at St. Petersburg, concluded between the Duke of Wellington and Nesselrode, formed the basis for Anglo-Russian intervention in the East.

The royalists of France were won over by an offer from the Greek insurgents to place the Duke of Nimours on the throne of Greece. Without giving actual support to the proposed intervention the French amba.s.sador in Constantinople was instructed to act with his English and Russian colleagues. Under the weight of this combination even Prince Metternich gave way.

Affairs in Germany were calculated to excite his alarm. At Dresden the accession of Anthony Clement to the crown of Saxony met with extreme disfavor on the part of the Saxon people by reason of Anthony's p.r.o.nounced Catholicism. Soon his measures provoked a rising of the people. Anthony had to resign, and Frederick Augustus II. became regent.

[Sidenote: Death of Hauff]

In Wurtemberg, where public affairs had taken a more liberal turn, the death of Wilhelm Hauff, the young author, was felt as a great loss. Hauff died in his twenty-fifth year, while still in the first promise of his literary activity. His stories of the Black Woods and his Oriental Tales, together with his medieval romance "Lichtenstein," modelled after the best of Walter Scott's romances, have a.s.sured him a prominent place in German letters.

[Sidenote: Laplace]

[Sidenote: The nebular hypothesis]

On March 15, Marquis Pierre Simon de Laplace, one of the greatest mathematicians and physical astronomers of all time, died at Arcueil.

Laplace was born in 1749, in Normandy. Although a poor farmer's son, he soon won the position of a teacher at the Beaumont Military School of Mathematics, and later at the Ecole Militaire of Paris. One of the early notable labors of Laplace was his investigation of planetary perturbations, and his demonstration that planetary mean motions are invariable--the first important step in the establishment of the stability of the solar system and one of the most brilliant achievements in celestial mechanics. In his "Exposition du Systeme du Monde" was formulated the theory called the "nebular hypothesis," the glory of which he must share with Kant. "He would have completed the science of the skies," says Fourier, "had the science been capable of completion." As a physicist he made discoveries that were in themselves sufficient to perpetuate his name, in specific heat, capillary action and sound. In mathematics he furnished the modern scientist with the famous Laplace co-efficients and the potential function, thereby laying the foundation of the mathematical sciences of heat and electricity. Not satisfied with scientific distinction, Laplace aspired to political honors and left a public record which is not altogether to his credit. Of his labors as Minister of the Interior, Napoleon remarked: "He brought into the administration the spirit of the infinitesimals." Although he owed his political success, small as it was, to Napoleon--the man whom he had once heralded as the "pacificator of Europe"--he voted for his dethronement.

[Sidenote: Death of Beethoven]

Shortly after the death of Laplace, Ludwig van Beethoven died in Vienna on March 26. The last years of his life were so clouded by his deafness and by the distressing vagaries of his nephew that he was often on the verge of suicide. In December, 1826, he caught a violent cold, which brought on his ultimate death from pneumonia and dropsy. Beethoven, though he adhered to the sonata form of the cla.s.sic school, introduced into his compositions such daringly original methods that he must be regarded as the first of the great romantic composers. Some of his latest compositions notably, were so very unconventional that they found no appreciation, even among musicians, until years after his death. Technically, his art of orchestration reached such a perfection of general unity and elaboration of detail that he must stand as the greatest instrumental composer of the nineteenth century. The profound subjective note that pervades his best compositions lifts his music above that of his greatest predecessors: Bach, Haydn and Mozart.

[Sidenote: Beethoven's career]

[Sidenote: Notable compositions]

[Sidenote: "Fidelio"]

[Sidenote: Beethoven's declining years]

Beethoven came of a line of musical ancestors. His grandfather and namesake was an orchestral leader and composer of operas. His father was a professional singer, who took his son's musical education in hand at the age of four. At eight the boy was a fluent performer both on the violin and on the piano. When but ten years old Beethoven produced his first pianoforte sonata, and was installed as a.s.sistant organist in the Electoral Chapel at Bonn. When the lad visited Vienna, in 1787, his extemporizations on the piano made Mozart exclaim: "He will give the world something worth listening to." It was Haydn that persuaded Beethoven's patron to send the youth to Vienna; there he became Haydn's pupil and received material support from Prince Lichnovsky, one of his warmest admirers. From his first entrance into the musical circles of Vienna, Beethoven was justly regarded as a highly eccentric man. His generosity of soul and transcendent genius made all those that learned to know him condone his freaks. It was after the opening of the Nineteenth Century that Beethoven reached his freest creative period. Between 1800 and 1815 he composed the first six of his great symphonies, the music to "Egmont," the best of his chamber-music pieces, fourteen pianoforte sonatas, among them the "Pastorale" and the "Appa.s.sionata," and his only opera "Fidelio." This opera, which was first named "Leonore," with an overture that was afterward abandoned, had its first public performance in Vienna just before Napoleon's entry into the capital in 1805. After three representations it was withdrawn. Nearly ten years later, after complete revision by Beethoven, "Fidelio" achieved its first great success. The great "Heroica Symphony" composed at the same time was originally dedicated to Bonaparte. When Napoleon had himself proclaimed Emperor, Beethoven tore up the dedication in a rage. It was subsequently changed "to the memory of a great man." After 1815, when the composer had grown quite deaf, his compositions, like his moods, took a gloomy cast. The extravagances of his nephew, whose guardians.h.i.+p he had undertaken, caused him acute material worries. In truth he need have given himself no concern, for his admirers, Archduke Rudolph and Princes Lobkovitz and Kinsky, settled on him an annuity of 4,000 florins; but to the end of his days the unhappy composer believed himself on the verge of ruin. When he died, his funeral was attended by the princes of the imperial house and all the greatest magnates of Austria and Hungaria. Twenty thousand persons followed his coffin to the grave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BEETHOVEN AND HIS ADMIRERS Painted by A. Grafle]

[Sidenote: English officers in Greece]

[Sidenote: Fall of Athens]

[Sidenote: Turks reject armistice]

By this time a number of foreign volunteers had flocked to Greece. Lord Cochrane, an English naval officer of venturous disposition, was appointed High Admiral. Sir Richard Church was put in command of the Greek land forces. Early in May, Church and Cochrane sought in vain to break the line of Turks under Kiutahi Pasha pressing upon Athens. They were defeated with great loss, and on June 5 the Acropolis of Athens surrendered to the Turks.