Part 23

In Germany, too, letters and arts were flourishing. In Vienna, Nikolaus Lenau (Baron Strehlenau) and his friend, Anastasius Gruen (Count Auersperg), were the leaders of a literary movement which found its counterpart in the so-called "Young German" movement of the north, where Ferdinand Freiligrath, Laube, Gutzkow, and Emanuel Geibel came under the ban of the German Bundesrath. The great political event of the year was the meeting of the first General Estates, convoked at Berlin. The new king's hostile attitude toward their popular demands for constitutional rights and larger liberties soon destroyed the hopes of liberal Germans for a change of spirit in the government of Prussia. A more material advance in civilization was assured by the opening of the first railway from Berlin to Magdeburg.

[Sidenote: Cornelius]

Peter von Cornelius, one of the leaders of the religious Catholic movement in art which had followed the classicism of the first decade of the century, was commissioned by the King to decorate the cemetery at Berlin. These decorations afterward, as well as the mural paintings in the Church of Saint Louis at Munich, proved to be his masterpieces.

[Sidenote: Defence of Jellalabad]

The British occupation of Afghanistan had continued since the last year. The expenses of the occupation were so heavy that economy was imperative. As soon as the British Resident cut down the subsidies paid to Shah Shuja the situation took a sinister turn. In October, Sir Robert Sale left Kabul with a brigade of British troops to reopen communications with Jellalabad, which had been interrupted by hostile mountain tribes. He got to Jellalabad only after a desperate struggle and heavy losses. His subsequent defence of that stronghold against the Afghans is one of the heroic traditions of British India.

[Sidenote: Massacre of Kabul]

[Sidenote: Afghans up in arms]

At Kabul, in the meanwhile, the garrison had been removed from the citadel of Bala Hasir to open cantonments outside of the city. Sir William MacNaghten, the British Resident, had been appointed Governor of Bombay, and was about to be succeeded by Sir Alexander Byrnes. Byrnes took up his abode in the centre of the city amid the turbulent bazaars. On November 2, the people of Kabul rose against the English. Byrnes barricaded his house and sent to MacNaghten for help. On the advice of General Elphinstone, MacNaghten decided to wait for further information before acting. The delay was fatal for Byrnes. He held out with thirty-two others from eight in the morning until two in the afternoon. Then the ammunition gave out. The mob rushed in and tore the house to pieces. Byrnes and twenty-three of his followers were massacred. One hour later a British relief corps tried to enter the city. All Kabul turned against them. The British were forced to retire. The news of this set Afghanistan wild. Thousands of armed mountaineers flocked to Kabul, and the whole nation rose against the foreigners. The British troops were cut off from all supplies. They maintained their precarious position only by lavish promises of ransom. At length, after many parleys, a meeting was arranged, for December 23, between MacNaghten and the Afghan chiefs. When the English envoy walked into the meeting the Afghans fell upon him, and he was slain by Akbar Khan.

1842

[Sidenote: MacNaghten's murder unavenged]

[Sidenote: The retreat from Kabul]

[Sidenote: Disaster of Khaibar Pass]

The situation of the British in Afghanistan was so critical that they could not avenge the murder of their countrymen. Negotiations were actually renewed with Akbar Khan upon his statement that he had not meant to murder the British envoy, but had been goaded into the act by the taunts of MacNaghten. Promises of safe conduct were obtained. In January the British forces began their retreat from Kabul. Then followed a series of treacheries and mutual breaches of faith. Akbar Khan and his hordes of Afghans dogged the retreating column exacting further concessions. The English women and children were demanded as hostages. From the heights of the Khaibar Pass, the Ghilzai mountaineers poured a destructive fire into the Englishmen. Akbar Khan's followers made common cause with them. Thousands of Englishmen were slain, or perished in the deep snows of the Khaibar Pass. The wounded and those who fell behind were butchered by the Afghans. A fortnight sufficed to cut the whole column to pieces. Of the entire force of 4,000 soldiers and 12,000 followers, one single survivor succeeded in reaching Jellalabad. He was a British surgeon named Brydon, who dragged himself on all fours out of reach of the Afghans; but he lived to tell the tale for more than thirty years afterward.

Colonel Stoddart and Captain Connelly had been sent as British emissaries to Bokhara. When the news of the British massacre at Kabul reached Bokhara, both men were promptly thrown into prison. Later, when the news of the British disaster in the Khaibar Pass reached Bokhara, the Ameer had the two envoys taken from their dungeons. They were publicly beheaded in the market-place of Bokhara.

[Sidenote: Lord Ellenborough in India]

[Sidenote: Jellalabad relieved]

[Sidenote: Recapture of Kabul]

[Sidenote: British vandalism]

Such was the state of affairs in India when Lord Ellenborough landed at Calcutta in February, to succeed Lord Auckland as Governor-General. The first trying need was to rescue the remaining British garrisons at Jellalabad and Kandahar. General Pollock, with a strong force of Sepoys, was sent through the Punjab and Peshawar. In April, he pushed his way through the Khaibar Pass, in the face of fierce resistance from the mountaineers. The relieving force reached Jellalabad none too soon. General Sale and his garrison were fighting for time. In a last sortie they had just inflicted a telling defeat on Akbar Khan and his besieging army. From Kabul the boy sovereign of the Afghans fled out of Akbar Khan's reach and put himself under the protection of General Pollock. Akbar Khan now wrote to General Pollock, offering to deliver up his British prisoners and hostages if he would withdraw from Afghanistan. Lord Ellenborough showed himself inclined to accept this proposition. The British officers at the front were furious. General Pollock wrote to Nott at Kandahar not to move until further instructions, while he himself reported to headquarters that he could not retire to Jellalabad for want of transports. Eventually, Lord Ellenborough consented to modify his instructions. Without waiting for this, General Nott was already marching on Kabul. Pollock, accompanied by Sale, left Jellalabad to support Nott's advance. In the Tezeen Valley the British came upon the scene of one of the bloodiest massacres of the retreat from Kabul. The sight of the murdered bodies of their comrades exasperated the soldiers. The heights around were bristling with Akbar Khan's men. In the face of a murderous fire from their matchlocks, the British stormed the heights and gave no quarter. Akbar Khan fled into the northern hills. In September, Nott's column took Kabul and hoisted the British flag over the Bala Hassar. The English captives managed to bribe their keepers and to join the rescuing army, amid general rejoicings. The British conquest of Afghanistan was followed by barbarous deeds of vandalism. The great bazaar of Kabul, one of the handsomest stone structures of Central Asia, was blown up by gunpowder. The city itself was turned over to loot and massacre. The bloodcurdling atrocities of the white men on that occasion kept alive the fierce hatred of all things British in Afghanistan for years to come. By the express orders of Lord Ellenborough the sacred sandalwood gates of Somnath, which had adorned the tomb of Mahmud of Ghasni since the Eleventh Century, were brought away as trophies of war.

[Sidenote: Boers driven from Natal]

[Sidenote: Foundation of Transvaal]

In South Africa, too, the seeds of enduring hatred were sown at this time. Scarcely had the new Boer community in Zululand become well settled when a proclamation was issued in Cape Town, declaring that Natal should become a British territory. Soldiers were despatched to Durban to support this claim. After some sharp fighting the Boers were driven out of the seaport. When the British Commissioner arrived at Pietermaritzburg, a stormy mass meeting was held. For two hours Erasmus Smith, the Boer predicant, argued in vain in behalf of his flock. In the end the Boer women passed a unanimous resolution that rather than submit to English rule they would emigrate once more. Pointing to the Drakensberg Mountains, the oldest of the women said: "We go across those mountains to freedom or to death." Over these mountains almost the whole population of Natal trekked their way into the uninhabited regions beyond. Only 300 families remained, the ancestors of some 10,000 Afrikanders of Natal in later days. On the other side of the Orange and Vaal Rivers the Boer emigrants founded once more their commonwealth, known later as the Transvaal, or South African Republic.

In Australia the first representative constitution was granted to the English colonists of New South Wales. Almost simultaneously with this began the agitation for separating Victoria from New South Wales.

[Sidenote: "The Sliding Scale"]

[Sidenote: British Income Tax]

In England, early in the Parliamentary session, Sir Robert Peel on behalf of the government moved his famous bill for a sliding scale of the duties on corn. In the debate that followed, the most notable speeches were made by Cobden and Macaulay, who advocated complete free trade. In spite of all opposition, the bill in an unamended form reached its third reading and was passed on the 5th of April. The most serious difficulty confronting the government was a financial deficit of L2,570,000, to which had to be added the heavy expenditures for the wars in India and China. To fill up this deficiency, Peel resorted to the levy of an income tax. To make this unpopular tax more acceptable a number of minor mischievous taxes were abolished. Thus rendered palatable, this bill, too, was carried through Parliament with tolerable speed, and was passed with handsome majorities by both Houses. It called for a tax of sevenpence on every pound of annual income above L150.

[Sidenote: Copyright reform]

[Sidenote: "Lays of Ancient Rome"]

[Sidenote: "Locksley Hall"]

In emulation of the new provisions for copyright in France, a bill was brought in to extend English copyright from twenty-eight to forty-two years. Among the considerations which prompted Parliament to perform this long delayed act of justice was the recent lamented death of Sir Walter Scott. The royalties on his works were the only resource left to his family, and the copyright on the most important of them, the Waverley Novels, was about to expire. Southey, the Poet Laureate, before his recent illness, it was stated, had been deterred from undertaking a projected great work by the unsatisfactory copyright provisions. Wordsworth was about to lose the fruits of some of his earliest and most patriotic poems. Among those who actively pressed the measure were Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle. The sixty years' copyright demanded in Carlyle's petition was not obtained; but authors were allowed to retain the property of their works during life, while their heirs could possess it for seven years after their death. Coincident with this literary victory came other triumphs in literature. Thomas B. Macaulay published his "Lays of Ancient Rome"; Alfred Tennyson brought out "Locksley Hall" and other poems; Bulwer Lytton finished "Zanoni"; the new Shakespeare Society issued some twenty volumes of researches. A new impetus to the making of books and printing was given by Woolwich's new system of electrotyping, and Charles Young's new device of a type-setting machine, first employed on the "Family Herald."

It was then, too, that Dr. Julius Robert Meyer, an obscure physician in Heilbronn, published a paper in Liebig's "Annalen," entitled "The Force of Inorganic Nature." Not merely the mechanical theory of heat, but the entire doctrine of the conservation of energy was clearly formulated. It is true that he was anticipated in a measure by Mohr, and that Helmholtz more exhaustively demonstrated the truth of the hypothesis of the conservation of energy; but Helmholtz himself hailed Meyer as the rightful claimant of the honor of having first clearly formulated the doctrine.

[Sidenote: Second Charter petition]

[Sidenote: The "Sacred Month"]

A great gain for humanity was made in Lord Ashley's successful bill for the restriction of work done by women and children in mines and collieries. Under the leadership of O'Connell's former Irish rival, Feargus O'Connor, the agitation for a People's Charter was revived. On May 2, another monster petition, containing nearly three and a half million signatures, was rolled into Parliament. Too voluminous to pass through the doors, it had to be cut up and carried into the hall by sixteen men. A motion to consider it was violently opposed by Macaulay. Once more the petition was rejected by 287 over 49 votes. Now followed one of the most singular labor strikes of England. This was the so-called sacred month, or thirty days' idleness to be enforced throughout the United Kingdom. Within a few days the Chartists could boast that for fifty miles round Manchester every loom was still. The attempt to extend the strike to London was followed by the arrest of O'Connor and nearly a hundred of his associates. They were tried and convicted, but owing to a flaw in the indictment sentence could not be carried out. The agitation was made to appear more serious by two attempts to assassinate the Queen in May and July, but the young Queen was not deterred thereby from making her first visit to Scotland.

[Sidenote: Chinese opium war]

[Sidenote: Fall of Chapoo]

[Sidenote: Shanghai occupied]

[Sidenote: Assault of Chinkiangfoo]

[Sidenote: China brought to terms]

[Sidenote: Treaty ports designated]

[Sidenote: Opium forced upon China]

In August, the Duke of Wellington was reinstated as commander-in-chief of the British army. Among the military reforms undertaken was the general introduction of the percussion-cap musket in the infantry, and the use of the carbine in the artillery. The war in China was brought to a close. The long period of inaction following the occupation of Ningpo had been broken in March by Chinese attempts to recapture Ningpo, Chinhai and Chusan. In all three places the British beat off their assailants. At Ningpo the Chinese succeeded in breaking through the south and west gates, and reached the centre of the city only to be mowed down there by the British artillery. At Tszeki a strong Chinese camp was captured by the British. The Chinese losses on this occasion were over a thousand killed, including many of the Imperial Guards. The British casualties did not exceed forty. A naval expedition next attacked Chapoo, China's port of trade with Japan. The main body of the Chinese was routed, but 300 of their soldiers shut themselves up in a walled inclosure, and held their ground until three-fourths of their number were slain. As heretofore, the British casualties were small. The important city of Shanghai was captured without appreciable resistance. The most serious affair of the war was the attack on Chinkiangfoo on the southern bank of the Yangtse-Kiang at one of the entrances of the great canal. A part of the Manchu garrison held out there until shot down to the last man. The inner Tartar city was only taken after the Manchus had first killed the women and children and then themselves. The immediate losses of the British were nearly two hundred. Owing to the intense heat, they failed to bury the bodies of the Chinese. Pestilence and cholera broke out, and caused more serious losses than befell the main force sent against Nanking. On August 5, the British fleet appeared before Nanking, the second city of the empire. It was then that Minister Elepoo, the leader of the Chinese peace party, prevailed upon Emperor Taouk-Wang to give in. On August 26, peace was concluded on board the British flagship "Cornwallis." China paid an indemnity of $21,000,000, and confirmed the cession of Hong Kong to England. The English opium factory at Canton was to be reinstalled, and, in addition to this, foreign trading was to be allowed at the ports of Shanghai, Ningpo, Amhoy and Foochow, after a tariff should have been agreed upon and consular officers appointed. The final ceremonies of peace were marred by barbarous injuries inflicted upon the famous porcelain tower of Nanking by a party of British officers and soldiers. In the words of a British historian: "The only weak point in the commercial treaty was that it contained no reference to opium. Sir Henry Pottinger failed to obtain the assent of the Chinese government to its legalization." In reply to Sir Henry Pottinger's final demand for legalization of the opium trade in China, Emperor Taouk-Wang delivered this ultimatum: "True, I cannot prevent the introduction of the poison; but nothing will induce me to raise revenue from the vice and misery of my people." The emperor, himself a reformed opium smoker, had lost three sons by this vice. All this time American, Dutch and Russian trade with China had been continued. President Tyler made it the subject of his message to the American Congress during this year. From the first any American traffic in opium was discouraged.

[Sidenote: Webster-Ashburton agreement]

[Sidenote: "Battle of the Maps"]

[Sidenote: American interests in Hawaii]

[Sidenote: Daniel Webster resigns]

The Webster-Ashburton treaty, regulating the northeastern boundary between the United States and Canada, was signed on August 9. A strip of territory claimed by the State of Maine was ceded to Canada, while a more important strip was yielded to Vermont and New York. The treaty also provided for a joint repressive action against the slave trade, and for the extradition of criminals. It was Webster's greatest achievement in diplomacy, as was indicated by the fact that the American Senate, notwithstanding its hostility to President Tyler, ratified it by a three-fourths vote. In England more serious opposition was encountered. In Parliament the treaty was termed "Ashburton's Capitulation," and Lord Palmerston went so far as to attribute its concessions to Ashburton's partiality toward his American wife. The ratification of the treaty was followed by an international controversy known as "The Battle of the Maps." An early map found by Jared Sparks, the American historian, in the Library of Paris, had been used in the Senate to insure the ratification of the treaty without the knowledge of Lord Ashburton. When this became known in England it was denounced as underhand dealing. Frantic search in the archives of the British Museum brought to light another map, bearing the autograph indorsement of King George III. As it turned out, this only sustained the American contentions, and was used in Parliament to vindicate Lord Ashburton, just as Sparks's map had been used in behalf of Webster. Credit also belongs to Webster for his strong stand made at the time the Hawaiian Islands were threatened by a French expedition. It was then stated, as reiterated by President Tyler to Congress, that, in view of the preponderant intercourse of the United States with those islands, the American government would insist that no European nation should colonize or possess them, nor subvert the native governments. After a settlement of these international questions, Daniel Webster was permitted to resign his secretaryship to join the Whig opposition on the floor of the House. His resignation was the more readily accepted since he was known to be out of harmony with the Administration's designs against Mexico. As the son of President Tyler has recorded: "The time had come when it was necessary to have in the office of the Secretary of State one who would go the full length of the Texas question. Certainly, that man was not Webster." In the Senate, Henry Clay resigned his seat, the better to carry on his canvass as a candidate for the Presidency.

[Sidenote: First American submarine cable]

At the time that Charles Dickens paid his first visit to America the agitation for a better copyright law was renewed, and was in a measure successful. Dickens's early impressions of the United States, as published later in England, were distinctly unfavorable to the American people. Had he lingered longer he might have witnessed the laying of the first submarine telegraph between Governor's Island and New York City. In the extreme West another outlet toward the Pacific Ocean was found by Fremont and Kit Carson in the south pass of the Rocky Mountains.

[Sidenote: Latin-American affairs]

In Central America, General Morazan invaded Costa Rica to re-establish by force the federation of the Central American States. At first he was welcomed by the population and recognized as President of Costa Rica. But later, as the guerilla war dragged itself out, the opposition gained ground. Jose Maria Alfaro was recognized as President. In South America, General Rosas made another attempt to subject Montevideo. Gold was discovered in Uruguay. In the West Indies, the restoration of peace in Cuba was followed by educational, far-reaching reforms. Another revolution in Hayti provoked French interference.

[Sidenote: French-Algerian campaign]

The French squadron that had made demonstrations in the Caribbean Sea presently descended upon the Marqueso Islands in the southern Pacific. The islands were annexed to France. In Africa, the war against Abd-el-Kader was pushed forward. The Arabs attacked Mostaganem and Arzee and lured Yussuf, the commander of the new French corps of native Spahis, into an ambush. General Valle, with a division of 9,000 men, drove Abd-el-Kader from an intrenched pass between Medah and Muzaia; but the French lost heavily. The Algerian war during this year alone cost 12,000 lives and 50,000,000 francs. Valle was superseded by Bugeaud.

The French general elections had just resulted in favor of the government, when, on July 13, the Duke of Orleans was killed by a fall from his carriage. After this event the Chambers fixed the succession to the throne upon the Duke of Nemours, until the children of the Duke of Orleans should be of age.

[Sidenote: Louis Blanc]

[Sidenote: Proudhon]

[Sidenote: Eugene Sue]

[Sidenote: "Stendhal"]

By this time the socialistic theories of Saint Simon and Fourier were exploited still further by Louis Blanc and Proudhon. Blanc's writings had an immense vogue among the workmen of Paris. This was especially true of his "Organisation du Travail," published this year, wherein he proclaimed the opportunity to work as a social right. Proudhon carried Etienne Cadet's "Icarian" theories so far that in his famous book, "What is Property?" after describing the conditions under which property is held according to the Napoleonic Code, he delivered the categorical dictum, "If this be property, then property is theft." Other popular books of the day were Eugene Sue's "The Mysteries of Paris," "Le Morne au Diable," and Georges Sand's famous novel "Consuelo." Marie Henri Beyle, known better under his pseudonym, "Stendhal," died during this year. As a novelist he was the precursor of the naturalistic school of romance in France, and was later acknowledged as such by Balzac, Flaubert and Emile Zola. His powers of prose were most ably demonstrated in the novel "Rouge et Noir," treating of the adventures of a worldly Abbe.

[Sidenote: Cherubini]