A History of the Nineteenth Century, Year by Year Part 9

1823

[Sidenote: French invasion of Spain]

The Spanish Government was resolved to maintain the national independence of Spain. It would make no concession. The French Amba.s.sador in Madrid was recalled. At the opening of the French Chambers in January, the King himself announced his decision: "I have ordered the recall of my Minister.

One hundred thousand Frenchmen, commanded by a prince of my family, whom I fondly call my son, are ready to march with a prayer to the G.o.d of St.

Louis that they may preserve the throne of Spain to the grandson of Henri IV. They shall save that fair kingdom from ruin and reconcile it to Europe." By the middle of March, the Duke of Angouleme and his staff left Paris. On April 7, the French vanguard crossed the Bida.s.soa, and the Duke entered Irun, welcomed by Spanish royalists. About the same time the Cortes and Const.i.tutional Ministry left Madrid, and compelled King Ferdinand VII.

to accompany them to Seville. The forces of the Spanish Government fell back without striking a blow. Bands of freebooters calling themselves royalists went pillaging throughout the northern provinces. The commandant of Madrid felt constrained to beg the French to hasten their advance lest the city fall a prey to the freebooters. Already the looting of the suburbs had begun, when the French entered the Spanish capital on the 24th of May.

A regency was appointed under the Duke of Infantado. The Continental powers sent accredited representatives to Madrid. Meanwhile the Cortes withdrew to Cadiz. King Ferdinand refused to accompany them; so they suspended his powers and appointed a regency over his head. The French prepared to lay siege to Cadiz.

[Sidenote: Revolution in Portugal]

[Sidenote: Independence of Central America]

[Sidenote: The South American struggle]

Civil war broke out in Spain. Across the border in Portugal, Dom Miguel, the second son of the absent king, excited a counter revolution. This state of affairs in the Peninsula gave a finis.h.i.+ng stroke to the royal cause in America. In Central America, the revolutionists of Costa Rica and Guatemala, who had made common cause with Mexico, proclaimed their independence. In Mexico, Santa Anna proclaimed the republic at Vera Cruz.

Emperor Iturbide, who felt his throne tottering beneath him, retired, and was banished from Mexico with an annuity. His sympathizers in Costa Rica were overthrown in a battle at Och.o.m.oco. On the first day of July, Costa Rica was united with its neighboring States in the federation of Central America. Nor had Peru been idle. Two royalist armies under Santa Cruz had entered the upper provinces. During the summer months they overran the country between La Paz and Oruro. But in early autumn they were forced back by the revolutionists under Bolivar, who entered Lima on September 1, and had himself proclaimed dictator of Peru. In Brazil, during this interval, the Const.i.tutional a.s.sembly had been convoked in accordance with Dom Pedro's promise. Under the leaders.h.i.+p of the two Andrade brothers the delegates insisted on the most liberal of const.i.tutions. Dom Pedro's first attempt to suppress the liberal leaders was foiled by the a.s.sembly. Finally he dissolved the contentious a.s.sembly and exiled the Andrade brothers to France. In the provinces of Pernambuco and Ceara a republic was proclaimed.

Rebellion broke out in Cisplatina.

[Sidenote: Warring factions in Spain]

[Sidenote: Siege of Cadiz]

In Spain, the two opposing regencies vied with each other in retaliatory measures. Odious persecutions were inst.i.tuted on both sides. In vain the Duke of Angouleme tried to restrain the reprisals of the Spanish royalists.

In August he appeared before Cadiz. He called upon King Ferdinand to publish an amnesty and restore the medieval Cortes. But the Spanish Ministry, in the King's name, sent a defiant answer. Cadiz was thereupon besieged. On August 30, the French stormed the fort of the Trocadero. Three weeks later the city was bombarded. For the Spanish liberals, the cause had become hopeless. The French refused all terms but the absolute liberation of the King. On Ferdinand's a.s.surance that he bore no grudge against his captors, the liberals agreed to release him. At last, on the 30th of September, Ferdinand signed a proclamation of absolute and universal amnesty. Next day he was taken across the bay to the French headquarters.

The Cortes dissolved.

[Sidenote: Release of Ferdinand VII.]

The Duke of Angouleme received King Ferdinand with misgivings. Already he had written to France: "What most worries the liberals is the question of guarantees. They know that the King's word is utterly worthless, and that in spite of his promises he may very well hang every one of them."

Angouleme's first interview confirmed his impression. In reply to his demand for a general pardon, Ferdinand pointed to the ragged mob shouting in front of his windows, and said: "You hear the will of the people."

Angouleme wrote to Villele: "This country is about to fall back into absolutism. I have conscientiously done my part, and shall only express my settled conviction that every foolish act that can be done will be done."

[Sidenote: Royalist reprisals]

[Sidenote: Riego executed]

Within twelve hours Ferdinand annulled all acts of the Const.i.tutional Government during the preceding three years. By approving an act of the regency of Madrid, which declared all those who had taken part in the removal of the King to be traitors, Ferdinand practically signed the death warrant of those men whom he had just left with fair promises on his lips.

Even before reaching Madrid, Ferdinand VII. banished for life from Madrid and from the country fifty miles around it every person who had served the government in Spain during the last three years. Don Saez, the King's confessor, was made Secretary of State. He revived the Inquisition, and ordered the prosecution of all those concerned in the pernicious and heretical doctrines a.s.sociated with the late outbreak. Ferdinand justified his acts with a royal p.r.o.nunciamiento containing this characteristic pa.s.sage: "My soul is confounded with the horrible spectacle of the sacrilegious crimes which impiety has dared to commit against the Supreme Maker of the universe.... My soul shudders and will not be able to return to tranquillity, until, in union with my children, my faithful subjects, I offer to G.o.d holocausts of piety." Thousands of persons were imprisoned, or forced to flee the country. On November 7, Riego was hanged. Young men were shot for being Freemasons. Women were sent to the galleys for owning pictures of Riego.

The Duke of Angouleme was indignant and would have nothing more to do with the King. In a parting letter of remonstrance he wrote: "I asked your Majesty to give an amnesty, and grant to your people some a.s.surance for the future. You have done neither the one nor the other. Since your Majesty has recovered your authority, nothing has been heard of on your part but arrests and arbitrary edicts. Anxiety, fear, and discontent begin to spread everywhere." Angouleme returned to France thoroughly disenchanted with the cause for which he had drawn his sword.

[Sidenote: The French elections]

In France, as in England, the return of absolute rule in Spain was viewed with extreme disfavor by the Liberals. The success of the French arms, to be sure, gave the government an overwhelming majority at the elections. The voice of the Liberals was heard, however, in the first debate over the Spanish war. Manuel, a Liberal deputy, denounced foreign intervention in Spain. He said: "Can any one be ignorant that the misfortunes of the Stuarts in England were caused by nothing so much as the a.s.sistance granted them by France--an a.s.sistance foreign to the Parliament and to the people.

The Stuarts would have avoided the fate that overtook them had they sought their support within the nation." For this alleged defence of regicide Manuel was excluded from the Chambers. On his refusal to give up his const.i.tutional rights, he was forcibly ejected by the National Guards. "It is an insult to the National Guard," exclaimed the venerable Lafayette. In spite of the momentary triumph of the Royalists, Guizot's final verdict on French intervention in Spain expresses the true att.i.tude of France:

[Sidenote: Guizot's verdict]

"The war was not popular in France; in fact, it was unjust, because unnecessary. The Spanish revolution, in spite of its excesses, exposed France and the Restoration to no serious risk; and the intervention was an attack upon the principle of the legitimate independence of States. It really produced neither to Spain nor France any good result. It restored Spain to the incurable and incapable despotism of Ferdinand VII., without putting a stop to the revolutions; it subst.i.tuted the ferocities of the absolutist populace for that of the anarchical populace. Instead of confirming the influence of France beyond the Pyrenees, it threw the King of Spain into the arms of the absolutist powers, and delivered up the Spanish Liberals to the protection of England."

During this year in France occurred the deaths of Dumouriez, the famous general of the Revolution, and of Marshal Davoust, the hero of Eckmuhl, Auerstadt, and a score of other victories won during the Napoleonic campaigns. At Rome, Pope Pius VII., the one time prisoner of Napoleon, died in old age, and was succeeded by Pope Leo XII.

[Sidenote: Death of Jenner]

[Sidenote: Vaccination]

Dr. Edward J. Jenner, the great English surgeon and originator of vaccination, died in the same year at London. Jenner was led to his great discovery by the remark of an old peasant woman: "I can't catch smallpox, for I have had cowpox." In 1796, Jenner performed the first vaccination on a boy patient, James Phipps, whom he subsequently endowed with a house and grounds. The scientific results of this experiment and those that followed were embodied by Jenner in his "Inquiry into the causes and effects of the variolae vaccinae," published on the eve of the Nineteenth Century. Unlike so many other medical innovations, Jenner's epoch-making cure for the dread disease of smallpox won him almost instant general renown. Parliament, in 1802, voted him a national reward of 10,000, and a few years later added another gift of 20,000. After his death a public monument was erected to Jenner's memory on Trafalgar Square.

[Sidenote: Amherst Governor in India]

In India, Lord Hastings retired from the governors.h.i.+p at Calcutta and was succeeded by Lord Amherst. At the time of his accession to office, Dutch influence had already become paramount in Borneo, whereas the British were firmly settled in Singapore.

[Sidenote: American letters]

In North America it was a year of industrial progress. On October 8, the first boat pa.s.sed through the new Erie Ca.n.a.l from Rochester to New York. In Brooklyn the first three-story brick houses were built and the paving of streets was begun. The new system of numbering houses came in vogue. The earliest steam printing press was set up in New York and issued its first book. The manufacture of pins was begun, and wine in marketable quant.i.ties was first made in Cincinnati. American letters saw the appearance of Cooper's novels, "The Pioneers" and the "Pilot." Halleck published his famous poem, "Marco Bozarris." During this year an American squadron under Commodore Porter put an end to piracy and freebooting in the West Indies.

On the first day of December the Eighteenth Congress met and Henry Clay was once more elected Speaker of the House.

1824

[Sidenote: American high tariff]

[Sidenote: Southern ascendency waning]

In January, a protective tariff bill was introduced in the American Congress. It was opposed by the South and by New England. On May 22, Congress, by a majority of five in the House and four in the Senate, pa.s.sed Clay's measure. The average rate of tariff was thirty-seven per cent.

Before the pa.s.sage of the bill England had been importing goods more cheaply than Americans could manufacture them. American manufacturers could now sell their goods at a profit. Even then there were believers in free trade, who held that the country would naturally produce that which was prohibited, and that the productions which were brought into existence by taxation put a portion of the people into unprofitable employment, advantageous only to the manufacturers. But the Middle and Western States, with the aid of the representatives from the manufacturing districts of New England, were strong enough to give the tariff a small majority. From 1824 the imposition of protective duties has been the bone of contention of the two great political parties in America. The economical struggle between protection and free trade has since gone on with varying features.

Political leaders.h.i.+p in the United States was pa.s.sing from the South to the North. New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio were fast pus.h.i.+ng to the front.

Buffalo had 20,000 population; and other interior towns were growing rapidly. Millions of acres of valuable lands were put under cultivation in the central and western counties of New York and Pennsylvania and in Ohio; manufacturing industries multiplied. From a spa.r.s.ely inhabited country in 1800, Ohio had grown, in 1824, to be the fifth State in population.

[Sidenote: American letters]

American letters were enriched in this year by Irving's "Tales of a Traveller," Paulding's "John Bull," Bancroft's "Politics in Ancient Greece," and Verplanck's "Revealed Religion."

[Sidenote: South American republics recognized]

During the first session of Congress a special message from President Monroe recommended the establishment of intercourse with the new independent States of South America--Venezuela, New Granada, Buenos Ayres, Chile and Peru. Congress voted for recognition by an overwhelming majority, and the President signed the bill. The United States was the first among the civilized powers to welcome the new republics.

The struggle for independence in South America was furthered more than ever by the unsatisfactory state of affairs on the Peninsula. In Spain the return of absolute rule was still followed by a reign of terror. The people there relapsed into medieval barbarism.

[Sidenote: Portuguese Const.i.tution triumphant]

[Sidenote: Growth of republican sentiment]

[Sidenote: Iturbide shot]