A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 7

In English literary annals this year was marked furthermore by the death of John Keats. He was but twenty-five, still in the first flush of his genius.

Keats was buried in Rome, where he died. On his gravestone is the epitaph composed by himself: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." It was generally a.s.sumed in England that the poet's death was caused by his anguish over the merciless criticisms of "Blackwood's Magazine" and the "Quarterly Review." Lord Byron was unkind enough to exploit this notion in his "Don Juan":

John Keats, who was killed off by one critique, Just as he really promised something great If not intelligible, without Greek Contrived to talk about the G.o.ds of late Much as they might have been supposed to speak.

Poor fellow! His was an untoward fate; 'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery particle, Should let itself be snuffed out by an article.

As a matter of fact Keats died of consumption. The ravages of this disease in his case were accelerated by his feverish pa.s.sion for poetry, his love affair with f.a.n.n.y Brawne, financial embarra.s.sments, and only to a slight extent by the inevitable disappointment arising from adverse criticisms.

What Byron did for modern Greece in England, Keats may be said to have done for ancient Greece. The beautiful songs of Greece, embodied in "Endymion"

and "Hyperion," no less than the enthusiastic odes and sonnets in praise of h.e.l.lenic works of art, opened the eyes of many of the contemporaries of Keats to the enduring beauties of Greece. It was in his exquisite "Ode to a Grecian Urn," that Keats expressed his poetical master pa.s.sion for beauty:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LORD BYRON Painted by Maurin]

[Sidenote: "Adonais"]

Shortly after Keats's death appeared one of the most beautiful of Sh.e.l.ley's longer poems--"Adonais," written as an elegy on the death of Keats:

I weep for Adonais--he is dead.

Oh, weep for Adonais! though our tears Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!

And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers, And teach them thine own sorrow! Say. "With me Died Adonais; till the Future dares Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be An echo and a light unto eternity."

[Sidenote: Wilhelm Meister]

[Sidenote: Rise of romantic literature]

[Sidenote: Victor Hugo]

Other literary events of the year were the publication of Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister's Wander Jahre," and of Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's first long poem, "Ruslan and Ludmilla." In this epic, written during Pushkin's early banishment to Bessarabia, an old Russian theme of the heroic times of Kiev was treated much after the manner of Byron's romantic examples. In France the romantic period in literature was inaugurated by young Victor Hugo, who, but the year before, had been crowned as "Maitre des jeux floraux" for a prize poem on Henri IV. Now Chateaubriand, in his journal "Le Conservateur," welcomed him as "Un enfant sublime." By his own romantic followers Hugo was hailed as chief of their poetic "Bataillon Sacre."

During the same year the poet, then barely nineteen, married Mademoiselle Foucher, a girl of fifteen.

[Sidenote: Death of Napoleon]

The most important event of the year for Frenchmen was the death of Napoleon Bonaparte at Longwood, in St. Helena. He died on May 5, after taking the holy sacrament. He left a last will with several codicils. In it Napoleon made the following declarations:

[Sidenote: Napoleon's will]

"I die in the Apostolical and Roman religion, in the bosom of which I was born more than fifty years ago. It is my wish that my ashes may repose on the banks of the Seine, in the midst of the French people whom I have loved so well. I have always had reason to be pleased with my dearest wife, Maria Louisa. I retain for her, to the last moment, the most tender sentiments. I beseech her to watch, in order to preserve my son from the snares which yet environ his infancy. I recommend to my son never to forget that he was born a French prince, and never to allow himself to become an instrument in the hands of the triumvirs who oppress the nations of Europe: he ought never to fight against France, or to injure her in any manner; he ought to adopt my motto--_Everything for the French people_. I die prematurely, a.s.sa.s.sinated by the English oligarchy and its tool. The English nation will not be slow in avenging me. The two unfortunate results of the invasions of France, when she had still so many resources, are to be attributed to the treason of Marmont, Augereau, Talleyrand, and Lafayette. I forgive them--may the posterity of France forgive them as I do! I pardon Louis for the libel he published in 1820; it is replete with false a.s.sertions and falsified doc.u.ments. I disavow the 'Ma.n.u.script of St. Helena,' and other works, under the t.i.tle of 'Maxims, Sayings,' etc., which persons have been pleased to publish for the last six years. Such are not the rules which have guided my life. I caused the Duc d'Enghien to be arrested and tried because that step was essential to the safety, interest and honor of the French people, when the Comte d'Artois was maintaining, by his own confession, sixty a.s.sa.s.sins at Paris. Under similar circ.u.mstances I should act in the same way."

[Sidenote: The bequests]

To his son and immediate relatives, Napoleon left most of his personal effects. Among his relatives and favorite followers he distributed a sum of 6,000,000 francs, left in the hands of his bankers at the time of his flight from Paris; likewise the proceeds of a possible sale of his confiscated crown jewels. Count Lavalette and the children of Labedoyere were remembered with bequests of 100,000 and 50,000 francs, respectively.

The final clauses were:

"To be distributed among such proscribed persons as wander in foreign countries, whether they be French, Italians, Belgians, Dutch, Spanish, or inhabitants of the departments of the Rhine, under the directions of my executors, one hundred thousand francs. To be distributed among those who suffered amputation, or were severely wounded at Ligny or Waterloo, who may be still living, according to lists drawn up by my executors. The Guards shall be paid double, those of the Island of Elba quadruple, two hundred thousand francs."

[Sidenote: Cantillon remembered]

A curious bequest was that of 10,000 francs to Cantillon, a French subaltern, who was tried and acquitted for the attempted a.s.sa.s.sination of the Duke of Wellington in Paris on February 11, 1818. Napoleon thus explained this bequest:

[Sidenote: Last fling at Wellington]

"Cantillon had as much right to a.s.sa.s.sinate that oligarchist as the latter had to send me to perish upon the rock of St. Helena. Wellington, who proposed this outrage, attempted to justify it by pleading the interest of Great Britain. Cantillon, if he had really a.s.sa.s.sinated that lord, would have pleaded the same excuse, and been justified by the same motive--the interest of France--to get rid of this general, who, moreover, by violating the capitulation of Paris, had rendered himself responsible for the blood of the martyrs Ney, Labedoyere, etc., and for the crime of having pillaged the museums, contrary to the text of the treaties."

This last legacy was not paid until 1855, when Napoleon III. discharged it.

[Sidenote: Fall of Richelieu's Ministry]

[Sidenote: Villele Prime Minister]

Late in the year the Ministry of Duc de Richelieu succ.u.mbed to the machinations of Comte d'Artois. Before his resignation, Richelieu complained to the Count, reminding him of his promises of support at the first formation of the Cabinet. "The fact is, my dear Duke," replied Monsieur, "if you allow me to say so, you have taken my words too literally. And then the circ.u.mstances at that time were so different." The Prime Minister rose abruptly and sought out the King. "Monsieur has broken his word of honor," he said, "he has broken his word as a gentleman." "What would you have me do?" said Louis XVIII. "He conspired against Louis XVI.; he conspires against me; he will conspire against himself." The explosion of a barrel of gunpowder in the royal palace raised apprehensions of another painful scene, like that preceding the fall of the Ministry of Decazes. Richelieu resigned, and Villele took his place. Chateaubriand was sent to London as Amba.s.sador. While Parliamentary government in France labored thus under the onslaughts of the Royalist plotters in the Chambers, the so-called Era of Good Feeling in America was continued under the second administration of President Monroe.

[Sidenote: Inauguration of Monroe]

[Sidenote: Missouri admitted to Statehood]

The 4th of March fell on a Sunday, and Monroe was the first President to be inaugurated on the 5th. Missouri was admitted conditionally, and, on August 10, the President proclaimed its admission as the twenty-fourth State amid a tempest of political excitement. The contest over the slavery question was now supposed to be forever settled. In the debates of 1821, the House stood firmly against Missouri's admission as a slave State, and the Senate was equally determined that the colored citizens of other States should be denied citizens.h.i.+p in Missouri if the people so desired. At last it came to a conference committee. It was decided that the State should be admitted, as soon as its Legislature would agree that the section of the Const.i.tution in question should not be construed as authorizing a law excluding any citizens of other States from the immunities and privileges to which they were ent.i.tled under the Const.i.tution. The Legislature of Missouri gave this pledge, but it remained open whether free negroes and mulattoes were citizens in other States, and whether they were to be made citizens in Missouri. In the admission of Missouri there was for the first time an unmixed issue on the question of a free government or a slave-holding government in the United States. Doubtful dealings on the part of the Senators from Indiana and Illinois were followed by an attempt to make these States both slave-holding States, in face of the binding law of the Ordinance of 1787. A popular movement led by Governor Edward Coles of Illinois defeated this project.

[Sidenote: Liberia]

[Sidenote: Junius Brutus Booth]

On May 5, the territory of Liberia was secured on the west coast of Africa, and a colony was founded for the repatriation of negro slaves, with Monrovia for a capital. During this same period Junius Brutus Booth made his first appearance in America, as Richard III., at Richmond. Late in the year the remains of Andre, the British officer who was shot as a spy during the American Revolution, were placed on a British s.h.i.+p for interment in Westminster Abbey.

1822

[Sidenote: Greek independence declared]

[Sidenote: Sack of Chios]

[Sidenote: Kanaris' exploit]

Greek independence was declared on January 27. After the fall of Ali Pasha in February, the Sultan was able to turn his undivided attention to the Greek revolt. In March, a body of Samian revolutionists landed in Chios and incited the islanders to rise against the Turk. They laid siege to the citadel held by a Turkish garrison. Had the fleet of the Hydriotes helped them, they might have prevailed. As it was they rendered themselves a prey to the Turkish troops on the mainland. An army of nearly 10,000 Turks landed in Chios, and relieved the besieged garrison. Then the fanatical Moslems were let loose on the gentle inhabitants of the little island.

Thousands were put to the sword. The slave markets of Northern Africa were glutted with Chian women and children. Within a month the once lovely island was a ruined waste. All Greece and Europe was filled with horror.

Maurokordatos, now at the head of Greek affairs, was bitterly blamed for not sending over a fleet to save Chios. One single Greek took it into his hands to avenge his countrymen. The Turks were celebrating their sacred month of Ramazan. On the night of June 18, the festival of Biram, the Turkish fleet, under command of Kara Ali, was illuminated with colored lanterns. On that night Constantine Kanaris, a sea-captain from Psara, drove a fire-s.h.i.+p into the midst of the Turkish fleet. Sailing close up to the admiral's flags.h.i.+p he thrust his bowsprit into one of the portholes.

Then setting fire to the pitch and resin on board his s.h.i.+p, he dropped into his small boat and pulled away. A breeze fanned the flames, and in a moment the big Turkish man-of-war was afire. The powder magazine blew up and the lifeboats went up in flames. The burning rigging fell down upon the doomed crew, and the admiral was struck down on his p.o.o.p-deck. The s.h.i.+p was burned to the water's edge. The Turkish fleet scattered before the shower of blazing sparks, and was only brought together under the guns of the Dardanelles. This exploit made Kanaris the hero of Greece. Within the same year he repeated the feat.

[Sidenote: Morea reinvaded]

[Sidenote: End of Philh.e.l.lene corps]

[Sidenote: Defence of Argos]

[Sidenote: Turks demoralized]

The Sultan had thrown his whole land force into the Greek mainland.