A History of the Nations and Empires Involved and a Study of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict Part 17

Any interference with the prerogatives or absoluteness of an established church inst.i.tution is sure to arouse vigorous opposition. The disestablishment Bill, introduced on the 1st of March, 1869, was greeted in Ireland with the wildest protests from those interested in the Establishment. One synod, with a large a.s.sumption of inspired knowledge, denounced it as "highly offensive to the Almighty G.o.d." A martial clergyman offered to "kick the queen's crown into the Boyne," if she a.s.sented to any such measure. Another proposed to fight with the Bible in one hand the and sword in the other.

These wild outbreaks of theological partisans.h.i.+p had no effect on Gladstone, whose speech was one of the greatest marvels amongst his oratorical achievements. His chief opponent declared that though it lasted three hours, it did not contain a redundant word. The scheme which it unfolded -- a scheme which withdrew the temporal establishment of a Church in such a manner that the church was benefited, not injured, and which lifted from the backs of an oppressed people an intolerable burden - was a triumph of creative genius.

Disraeli's speech in opposition to this measure was referred bo by the LONDON TIMES as flimsiness relieved by spangles." After a debate in which Mr. Bright made one of his most famous speeches, the bill was carried by a majority of 118. Before this strong manifestation of the popular will the House of Lords, which deeply disliked the bill, felt obliged to give way, and pa.s.sed it by a majority of seven.

AN IRISH LAND BILL

In 1870 Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish Land Bill, a measure of reform which Parliament had for years refused to grant. By it the tenant was given the right to hold his farm as long as he paid his rent, and received a claim upon the improvement made by himself and his predecessors - a tenant-right which he could sell. This bill was triumphantly carried; and another important Liberal measure, Mr. Forster's Education bill, became law.

Other liberal measures were pa.s.sed, but the tide which had set so long in this direction turned at last, the government was defeated in 1873 on a bill for University Education, and in a subsequent election the Liberal party met with defeat. Gladstone at once resigned and was succeeded by Disraeli. Two years later the latter was raised to the peerage by the Queen under the t.i.tle of the Earl of Beaconsfield. Gladstone was not in the field for honors of this type. He much preferred to inherit the t.i.tle of a distinguished predecessor, that of "The Great Commoner." During his recess from office he occupied himself in literary labors and as a critical commentator upon the foreign policy of Disraeli, which plunged the country into a Zulu war which Gladstone denounced as "one of the most monstrous and indefensible in our history," and an Afghan war which he described as a national crime.

These and other acts of Tory policy in time brought liberalism again into the forefront, an election held in 1880 resulted in a great Liberal victory, Disraeli (then Lord Beaconsfield) resigned and Gladstone was once again called to the head of the ministry.

In the new administration the foreign policy, the meddling in the concerns of the East, which had held precedence over domestic affairs under the preceding administration, vanished from sight, and the Irish question again became prominent. Ireland had now gained an able leader, Charles Stewart Parnell, founder of the Irish Land League, a trade union of Irish farmers, and its affairs could no longer be consigned to the background.

Gladstone, in a.s.suming control of the new government, was quite unaware of the task before him. When he had completed his work with the Church and the Land bills ten years before, he fondly fancied that the Irish question was definitely settled. The Home Rule movement, which was started in 1870, seemed to him a wild delusion which would die away of itself. In 1884 he said: "I frankly admit that I had had much upon my hands connected with the doings of the Beaconsfield Government in every quarter of the world, and I did not know - no one knew - the severity of the crisis that was already swelling upon the horizon, and that shortly after rushed upon us like a flood."

DESPERATE STATE OF IRELAND

He was not long is discovering the gravity of the situation, of which the House had been warned by Mr. Parnell. The famine had brought its crop of misery, and, while the charitable were seeking to relieve the distress, many of the landlords were turning adrift their tenants for non-payment of rents. The Irish party brought in a Bill for the Suspension of Evictions, which the government replaced by a similar one for Compensation for Disturbance. This was pa.s.sed with a large majority by the Commons, but was rejected by the Lords, and Ireland was left to face its misery without relief.

The state of Ireland at that moment was too critical to be dealt with in this manner. The rejection of the Compensation for Disturbance Bill was, to the peasantry whom it had been intended to protect, a message of despair, and it was followed by the usual symptom of despair in Ireland, an outbreak of agrarian crime. On the one hand over 17,000 persons were evicted; on the other there was a dreadful crop of murders and outrages. The Land League sought to do what Parliament did not; but in doing so it came in contact with the law. Moreover, the revolution - for revolution it seemed to be - grew too formidable for its control; the utmost it succeeded in doing was in some sense to ride without directing the storm. The first decisive step of Mr.

Forster, the chief secretary for Ireland, was to strike a blow at the Land League. In November he ordered the prosecution of Mr.

Parnell, Mr. Biggar, and several of the officials of the organization, and before the year was out he announced his intention of introducing a Coercion Bill. This step threw the Irish members under Mr. Parnell and the Liberal Government into relations of definitive antagonism.

THE COERCION BILL

Mr. Forster introduced his Coercion Bill on January 24, 1881. It was a formidable measure, which enabled the chief secretary, by signing a warrant, to arrest any man on suspicion of having committed a given offense, and to imprison him without trial at the pleasure of the government. It practically suspended the liberties of Ireland. The Irish members exhausted every resource of parliamentary action in resisting it, and their tactics resulted in several scenes unprecedented in parliamentary history. In order to pa.s.s the bill it was necessary to suspend them in a body several times. Mr. Gladstone, with manifest pain, found himself, as leader of the House, the agent by whom this extreme resolve had to be executed.

The Coercion Bill pa.s.sed, Mr. Gladstone introduced his Land Bill of 1881, which was the measure of conciliation intended to balance the measure of repression. This was really a great and sweeping reform, whose dominant feature was the introduction of the novel and far-reaching principle of the state stepping in between landlord and tenant and fixing the rents. The bill had some defects, as a series of amending acts, which were subsequently pa.s.sed by both Liberal and Tory governments, proved; but, apart from these, it was on the whole the greatest measure of land reform ever pa.s.sed for Ireland by the Imperial Parliament.

But Ireland was not yet satisfied. Parnell had no confidence in the good intentions of the government, and took steps to test its honesty, which so angered Mr. Forster that he arrested Mr.

Parnell and several other leaders and p.r.o.nounced the Land League an illegal body. Forster was well-meaning but mistaken. He fancied that by locking up the ring-leaders he could bring quiet to the country. On the contrary, affairs were soon far worse than ever, crime and outrage spreading widely. In despair, Mr. Forster released Parnell and resigned. All now seemed hopeful; coercion had proved a failure; peace and quiet were looked for; when, four days afterward, the whole country was horrified by a terrible crime. The new Secretary for Ireland, Lord Cavendish, and the under-secretary, Mr. Burke, were attacked and hacked to death with knives in Phoenix Park. Everywhere panic and indignation arose. A new Coercion Act was pa.s.sed without delay. It was vigorously put into effect, and a state of virtual war between England and Ireland again came into existence.

WARS IN AFRICA

Meanwhile Great Britain had been brought back into the tide of foreign affairs. Events were taking place abroad which must here be dealt with briefly. The ambitious Briton, who loves to carry the world on his shoulders, had made the control of the Suez Ca.n.a.l an excuse for meddling with the government of Egypt.

The immediate results were a revolution that drove Ismail Pasha from this throne, and a revolt of the people under an ambitious leader named Arabi Pasha, who seized Alexandria and drove out the British, many of whom were killed.

Gladstone, who deprecated war, now found himself with a conflict thrust upon his hands. The British fleet bombarded Alexandria, and the British army occupied it after it had been half reduced to ashes. Soon after General Wolseley defeated Arabi and his army and the insurrection ended. A sequel to this affair was a formidable outbreak in the Soudan, under El Mahdi, a Mohammedan fanatic, who captured the city of Khartoum and killed the famous General Gordon. Years pa.s.sed before Upper Egypt was reconquered, it being recovered only at the close of the century. Since then Egypt has remained under British control.

There were serious troubles also in South Africa. The British of Cape Colony had pushed their way into the Boer settlement of the Transvaal, claiming jurisdiction over it. The valiant Dutch settlers broke into war, and dealt the invaders a signal defeat at Majuba Hill. This was the opening step in a series of occurrences which led to the later Boer war, in which the British, with great loss, conquered the Boers, followed in later years by a practical reconquest of the country by its Boer inhabitants in peaceful ways.

Such were the wars of the Gladstone administration, events of which he did not approve, but into which he was irresistibly drawn. At home the Irish question continued in the forefront. The African wars having weakened the administration, a vigorous a.s.sault was made on it by the Irish party in 1885, and it fell.

But its demise was a very brief one. After a short experience of a Tory ministry under Lord Salisbury, Parnell's party rallied to Gladstone's side, the new government was defeated, and on February 1, 1886, Gladstone became Prime Minister for the third time.

HOME RULE FOR IRELAND

During the brief interval his opinions had suffered a great revolution. He no longer thought that Ireland had all it could justly demand. He returned to power as an advocate of a most radical measure, that of Home Rule for Ireland, a restoration of that separate Parliament which it had lost in 1800. He also had a scheme to buy out the Irish landlords and establish a peasant proprietary by state aid. His new views were revolutionary in character, but he did not hesitate - he never hesitated to do what his conscience told him was right. On April 8, 1886, he introduced to Parliament his Home Rule Bill.

The scene that afternoon was one of the most remarkable in Parliamentary history. Never before was such interest manifested in a debate by either the public or the members of the House. In order to secure their places, members arrived at St. Stephen's at six o'clock in the morning, and spent the day on the premises; and, a thing quite unprecedented, members who could not find places on the benches filled up the floor of the House with rows of chairs. The strangers', diplomats', peers', and ladies'

galleries were filled to overflowing. Men begged even to be admitted to the ventilating pa.s.sages beneath the floor of the chamber that they might in some sense be witnesses of the greatest feat in the lifetime of an ill.u.s.trious old man of eighty. Around Palace Yard an enormous crowd surged, waiting to give the veteran a welcome as he drove up from Downing Street.

Mr. Gladstone arrived in the House, pale and still panting from the excitement of his reception in the streets. As he sat there the entire Liberal party - with the exception of Lord Hartington, Sir Henry James, Mr. Chamberlain and Sir George Trevelyan - and the Nationalist members, by a spontaneous impulse, sprang to their feet and cheered him again and again. The speech which he delivered was in every way worthy of the occasion. It expounded, with marvelous lucidity and a n.o.ble eloquence, a tremendous scheme of constructive legislation - the re-establishment of a legislature in Ireland, but one subordinate to the Imperial Parliament, and hedged round with every safeguard which could protect the unity of the Empire. It took three hours in delivery, and was listened to throughout with the utmost attention on every side of the House. At its close all parties united in a tribute of admiration for the genius which had astonished them with such an exhibition of its powers.

Yet it is one thing to cheer an orator, another thing to vote for a revolution. The bill was defeated - as it was almost sure to be. Mr. Gladstone at once dissolved Parliament and appealed to the country in a new election, with the result that he was decisively defeated. His bold declaration that the contest was one between the cla.s.ses and the ma.s.ses turned the aristocracy against him, while he had again roused the bitter hatred of his opponents.

Gladstone, the "Grand Old Man," a t.i.tle which he had n.o.bly won, returned to power in 1892, after a period of wholesale coercion in Ireland. He was not to remain there long. He brought in a new Home Rule Bill, supported it with much of his old vigor, and had the intense satisfaction of having it pa.s.sed, with a majority of thirty-four. It was defeated in the House of Lords, and Home Rule, still remains the prominent issue in Ireland, which it has divided into two camps, Protestant Ulster being in revolt against the Catholic provinces.

With this great event the public career of the Grand Old Man came to an end. The burden had grown too heavy for his reduced strength. In March, 1894, to the consternation of his party, he announced his intention of retiring from public life. The Queen offered, as she had done once before, to raise him to the peerage as an earl, but he declined the proffer. His own plain name was a t.i.tle higher than that of any earldom in the kingdom.

On May 19, 1898, William Ewart Gladstone laid down the burden of his life as he had already done that of labor. The n.o.blest figure in legislative life of the nineteenth century had pa.s.sed away from earth.

Chapter XIV. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC

Struggles of a New Nation

The Republic Organized - The Commune of Paris - Instability of the Government - Thiers Proclaimed President - Punishment of the Unsuccessful Generals - MacMahon a Royalist President - Bazaine's Sentence and Escape - Grevy, Gambetta and Boulanger - The Panama Ca.n.a.l Scandal - Despotism of the Army Leaders - The Dreyfus Case - Church and State - The Moroccan Controversy

It has been already told how the capitulation of the French army at Sedan and the captivity of Louis Napoleon were followed in Paris by the overthrow of the empire and the formation of a republic, the third in the history of French political changes. A provisional government was formed, the legislative a.s.sembly was dissolved, and all the court paraphernalia of the imperial establishment disappeared. The new government was called in Paris the "Government of Lawyers," most of its members and officials belonging to that profession. At its head was General Trochu, in command of the army in Paris; among its chief members were Jules Favre and Gambetta. While upright in its members.h.i.+p and honorable in its purposes, it was an arbitrary body, formed by a coup d'etat like that by which Napoleon had seized the reins of power, and not destined for a long existence.

THE REPUBLIC ORGANIZED

The news of the fall of Metz and the surrender of Bazaine and his army served as a fresh spark to the inflammable public feeling of France. In Paris the Red Republic raised the banner of insurrection against the government of the national defense and endeavored to revive the spirit of the Commmune of 1793. The insurgents marched to the senate-house, demanded the election of a munic.i.p.al council which should share power with the government, and proceeded to imprison Trochu, Jules Favre, and their a.s.sociates. This, however, was but a temporary success of the Commune, and the provisional government continued in existence until the end of the war, when a national a.s.sembly was elected by the people and the temporary government was set aside. Gambetta, the dictator, "the organizer of defeats," as he was sarcastically ent.i.tled, lost his power, and the aged statesman and historian, Louis Thiers, was chosen as chief of the executive department of the new government.

The treaty of peace with Germany, including, as it did, the loss of Alsace and Lorraine and the payment of an indemnity of $1,000,000,000, roused once more the fierce pa.s.sions of the radicals and the ma.s.ses of the great cities, who pa.s.sionately denounced the treaty as due to cowardice and treason. The dethroned emperor added to the excitement by a manifesto, in which he protested against his deposition by the a.s.sembly and called for a fresh election. The final incitement to insurrection came when the a.s.sembly decided to hold its sessions at Versailles instead of in Paris, whose unruly populace it feared.

THE COMMUNE OF PARIS

In a moment all the revolutionary elements of the great city were in a blaze. The social democratic "Commune," elected from the central committee of the National Guard, renounced obedience to the government and the National a.s.sembly, and broke into open revolt. An attempt to repress the movement merely added to its violence, and all the riotous populace of Paris sprang to arms. A new war was about to be inaugurated in that city which had just suffered so severely from the guns of the Germans, and around which German troops were still encamped.

The government had neglected to take possession of the cannon Montmartre; and now, when the troops of the line, instead of firing on the insurrectionists, went over in crowds to their side, the supremacy over Paris fell into the hands of the wildest demagogues. A fearful civil war commenced, and in the same forts which the Germans had shortly before evacuated firing once more resounded; the houses, gardens, and villages around Paris were again surrendered to destruction; the creations of art, industry, and civilization were endangered, and the abodes of wealth and pleasure were transformed into dreary wildernesses.

The wild outbreaks of fanaticism on the part of the Commune recalled the scenes of the revolution of 1789, and in these spring days of 1871 Paris added another leaf to its long history of crime and violence. The insurgents, roused to fury by the efforts of the government to suppress them, murdered two generals, Lecomte and Thomas, and fired on the unarmed citizens who, as the "friends of order," desired a reconciliation with the authorities at Versailles. They formed a government of their own, extorted loans from wealthy citizens, confiscated the property of religious societies, and seized and held as hostages Archbishop Darboy and many other distinguished clergymen and citizens.

Meanwhile the investing French troops, led by Marshal MacMahon, gradually fought their way through the defenses and into the suburbs of the city, and the speedy surrender of the anarchists in the capital became inevitable. This necessity excited their pa.s.sions to the most violent extent, and, with the wild fury of savages, they set themselves to do all the damage they could to the historical monuments of Paris. The n.o.ble Vendome column, the symbol of the warlike renown of France, was torn down from its pedestal and hurled prostrate into the street. The most historic buildings in the city were set on fire, and either partially or entirely destroyed. Among these were the Tuileries, a portion of the Louvre, the Luxembourg, the Palais Royal, the Elysee, etc.; while several of the imprisoned hostages, foremost among them Darboy, Archbishop of Paris, and the universally respected minister Daguerry, were shot by the infuriated mob. Such crimes excited the Versailles troops to terrible vengeance, when they at last succeeded in repressing the rebellion. They made their way along a b.l.o.o.d.y course; human life was counted as nothing; the streets were stained with blood and strewn with corpses, and the Seine once more ran red between its banks. When at last the Commune surrendered, the judicial courts at Versailles began their work of retribution. The leaders and partic.i.p.ators in the rebellion who could not save themselves by flight were shot by hundreds, confined in fortresses, or transported to the colonies.

For more than a year the imprisonments, trials, and executions continued, military courts being established which excited the world for months by their wholesale condemnations to exile and to death. The carnival of anarchy was followed by one of pitiless revenge.

INSTABILITY OF THE GOVERNMENT

The Republican government of France, which had been accepted in an emergency, was far from carrying with it the support of the whole of the a.s.sembly or of the people, and the aged, but active and keen-witted Thiers had to steer through a medley of opposing interests and sentiments. His government was considered, alike by the Monarchists and the Jacobins, as only provisional, and the Bourbons and Napoleonists on the one hand and the advocates of "liberty, equality and fraternity" on the other, intrigued for its overthrow. But the German armies still remained on French soil, pending the payment of the costs of the war; and the astute chief of the executive power possessed moderation enough to pacify the pa.s.sions of the people, to restrain their hatred of the Germans, which was so boldly exhibited in the streets and in the courts of justice, and to quiet the clamor for a war of revenge.

The position of parties at home was confused and distracted, and a disturbance of the existing order could only lead to anarchy and civil war. Thiers was thus the indispensable man of the moment, and so much was he himself impressed by the consciousness of this fact, that many times, by the threat of resignation, he brought the opposing elements in the a.s.sembly to harmony and compliance.

This occurred even during the siege of Paris, when the forces of the government were in conflict with the Commune. In the a.s.sembly there was shown an inclination to moderate or break through the sharp centralization of the government, and to procure some autonomy for the provinces and towns. When, therefore, a new scheme was discussed, a large part of the a.s.sembly demanded that the mayors should not, as formerly, be appointed by the government, but be elected by the town councils. Only with difficulty was Thiers able to effect a compromise, on the strength of which the government was permitted the right of appointment for all towns numbering over twenty thousand.

In the elections for the councils the moderate Republicans proved triumphant. With a supple dexterity, Thiers knew how to steer between the Democratic-Republican party and the Monarchists. When Gambetta endeavored to establish a "league of Republican towns,"

the attempt was forbidden as illegal; and when the decree of banishment against the Bourbon and Orleans princes was set aside, and the latter returned to France, Thiers knew how to postpone the entrance of the Duc d'Aumale and Prince de Joinville, who had been elected deputies, into the a.s.sembly at least until the end of the year.